GNA At War With Statesman

The Management of the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Wednesday pledged to maintain its open door policy and would no longer tolerate any acts of indiscipline and sabotage from any of its workers.

It said: "The GNA is on the verge of undergoing restructuring under the Public Sector Reform Programme to make it operate more efficiently and viably.

"That is the focus of Management now and it should not be distracted from this goal by lies being peddled by some staff, who fear that they could be affected by any redundancy under the restructuring programme."

A statement signed by Mr Ray Ankomah, Business Development Manager, on behalf of the GNA Management in Accra in reaction to recent publications on the state of affairs at the Agency, said the former Chairman of the National Media Commission, Mr Nutifafa Kuenyehia; the Deputy Minister of Information, Mr Andrew Awuni and the Current Board Chairman of the GNA, Mr Rex Owusu-Ansah have on separate occasions condemned serial publications in some media circles of falsehoods and half-truths generated by a flood of anonymous letters written by some members of staff.

It said the GNA Management noted with regret a publication in the Thursday, November 20, edition of "The Statesman" with the headline: "Police Question GNA Staff", describing it as one of the latest of a series that paper had published against the GNA.

The statement said the publication exposed "The Statesman" as having set an agenda to champion the cause of some hidden faces.

It said the Rapid Response Unit of the CID Headquarters invited three members of Staff of the GNA "who are not Executive members of the local branch of the Public Services Workers Union (PSWU) to assist with investigations into a series of anonymous letters written by some workers of the Agency, which has been churning out a litany of lies against the present Management, particularly the General Manager, Mr Robert Kafui Johnson.

The statement said the General Manager "has become a target of malicious and disparaging allegations and anonymous letters and strangely enough these have become favourite subject of publication by "The Statesman".

"In fact several people and the Agency have suffered incalculable damage and harm from these anonymous letters, which have shamefully sought to conceal the real facts but chosen to confuse purely labour and disciplinary issues with politics and ethnicity."

It was under such circumstances that the Management requested the Police to unmask the faces behind the anonymous letters.

The statement said: "From our records, Mr Agyepong Darko and Mr Benjamin Mintah are not officers of the GNA local union of the PSWU. We are aware that there was a bye-election supervised by the Industrial Relations Officer of the PSWU to fill vacancies in the Executive. The results were rejected and the election annulled because the number of votes cast was greater than the number of persons who voted."

"Our information from the Union Executives, whom we have met regularly, is that the result was declared null and void and for that matter the claim by the Reporter of "The Statesman" that Mr Agyepong Darko and Mr Benjamin Mintah are Secretary and Assistant Secretary, respectively, is as hollow and baseless as the misinformation about the GNA that he has been spewing out for sometime now".

The statement said, "it is a blatant lie for the Statesman to state that there is an "uneasy calm" and "tension" in GNA and that there was "agitation for improved conditions of service and complete overhaul of the Management".

The statement said some of the problems being complained occurred at a time when Mr Agyepong Darko was directly in-charge of the Accounts Department so "he is, therefore, in a better position to tell the whole world how the so-called 'slashing' of salaries, over-payment and under-payment of staff salaries as well as the non-payment of SSNIT deductions occurred in 1999".

It said: "The issue of the termination of the appointment of Mr A.S. Adjei is an overplayed case where truths are twisted and blatant lies are told to deceive the world. Unfortunately, Mr Adjei and his small group of supporters have sought to politicise the termination of his appointment, which was purely a labour issue."

The statement said the appointment of Mr Adjei was not terminated because he blew a whistle but because of his indiscipline "and the records are there for all to see".

"The behaviour of Mr Darko and Mintah over Mr Adjei's case is not surprising. During a staff durbar with the GNA Board of Directors in October, this year, the two workers set their own condition that there would be no peace in GNA unless Mr Adjei was reinstated.

"However, it is noteworthy that speaker after speaker told them that staffs, who unnecessarily incite workers or commit intolerable offences, should be prepared to face disciplinary action", the statement said.