Kufuor's Staff Unpaid

Staffers of former President John Kufuor have not been paid a dime as salaries as well as their gratuity for the tens months they have been serving the former first gentleman of the land.

Mr. Frank Agyekum, Spokesperson for former President John Agyekum Kufuor, has also disclosed that the ex-president has not been paid his ex-gratia despite assurances from the government to do so.

According to him, when this matter came up, a commitment was made by government to pay him his salary but since then we have not really discussed whether he has been paid or not.

“Am on my way to the office but there is a lot of traffic on the road so call me in the next 40 minutes and I will confirm it for you but for us we have not been paid anything”, he said.

He pointed out that though constitutionally, parliament was solely responsible for deciding the President’s benefits; President Mills’ administration went ahead to set-up a committee to review the ex-gratia.

Speaking on Joy Fm’s super morning show on a segment called total recall he said “For clarity...no vehicles officially have been given to the ex-president as at now...we were saying that the package should be given to him in whole and not as a matter of tokenism...to avoid any more hullabaloo, let us do the thing properly…when he’s doing anything it should come to parliament first… so that nobody then comes to question the following day how did he come by this or how he came by that office…if anything is going to be given to him, they should do what the constitution says and it should be done through parliament…as at now, no vehicles, no accommodation, no anything”.

Asked if the ex-president is unhappy with the current state of affairs regarding his ex-gratia, Mr. Agyekum replied in the affirmative, adding that the former President “felt he was being denied what was due him.”

“…Yes, because... he operates from his house and that is very inconvenient to him, because he has all kinds of people coming to visit him, he needs his privacy... with everybody coming in and out of his residence, you can understand that it is not the best arrangement...he (former President Kufuor) has vehicles which were not given to him by the state...even his security people have to use private vehicles he provided for them,” he stated.