We Don't Believe In Coup, But .....

Some members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) have sent a very disturbing open letter to the president and the minister of defence on the state of affairs in the army. According to them, their grievances are not being addressed after numerous complains and thus they have resorted to an open letter as a last resort. Below we publish the full details

What Is Happening In The Ghana Armed Forces?

The commander-in-chief [President Kufuor], his brother, Dr Addo-Kufour and the top echelon of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) are creating the wrong impression to the nation that all is well with this potentially volatile institution. The truth of the matter, is that, if things are not handled properly, the mismanagement, poor leadership and insensitivity on the part our political and military leaders may collapse the GAF. What are we saying?

1. Desertion from GAF

Unknown to most Ghanaians, both officers and men are deserting GAF at an alarming rate. Officers who served between 15 and 20 years and have applied to retire from the GAF are being forced to resign their commission. “Resigning commission” means you retire without your entitlement and you are also denied certain privileges accorded retired military officers.

For example: Major Azumah, Major Tom Wanya and a host other officers went without a penny, although officers are entitled to the option of “buying off the residual service”; you are now forced to resign your commission outright.

Instead of identifying and solving the problems of people trained with taxpayer’s money abandoning their career prematurely, the leadership of the GAF is rather planning to introduce a 20-year compulsory service for even those officers who enlisted years ago. Well, if this is a new labor or human resource law/principle, we shall see if it will see the light of day. That day heaven will break loose. The question we should ask ourselves is; why are the men deserting having served so many years?

2. Terrible Living Conditions

The worst day in our lives as soldiers was when the president told pressmen at the commissioning of the Burma hall that “morale in the GAF was high”. Why? 20 meters from the commissioned Burma hall, behind command mess, officers’ accommodation was and is still crying for renovation. The roofs are leaking, dangerous cracks in walls etc. In short the rooms are not just good for habitation and yet officers are pairing with their wives. Terribly sad!

Soldiers pay rent and is deducted at source but the state of our buildings…. No further comments.

3. Peacekeeping

Officers who go on observer missions (peacekeeping) are forced to pay 20% of their earned dollar to the GAF. Those who refuse to pay are shown the exit. We don’t even know what those monies are used for. Can the labor experts to tell us if it is right for employees’ allowances/salaries to be used to maintain an organization or institution without the employees consent? Should it even happen in a government institution like the GAF? These thieves should be stopped before we take issues into hands. We’ve endured them for far too long.

The defense minister and his cronies should explain to Ghanaians why they have abandoned the Ghanaian peacekeepers - the hen that lay the golden eggs - whose proceeds they use to sponsor Ghana missions abroad, build gigantic monuments, claim praises and yet refuse to look after them.

The Ghanaian soldier (peacekeeper) is the least paid and badly resourced in all the mission theatres in the world. Why? For example, the United Nations(UN) pays a clothing allowance of $68 a month for every soldier deployed in a mission area, but the sad part of this is that we struggle to get one pair of uniform without boot for the whole tour of duty and yet they expect us to appear neat at all times. Because you do not want to disgrace your country, you buy uniform with the pittance allowance you are given. Meanwhile a pair of uniform only cost $25. This is just the least of examples I want use for now. More and dearly ones will come out depending on how these issues are addressed.

The GAF should explain to Ghanaians why Ghana is not taking advantage of wet lease system introduced by UN in 1996. Countries like Bangladesh have made UN peacekeeping operation their number one foreign income earner. Ladies and gentlemen, what is this animal called wet lease system? Wet lease is a concept based on MOU between UN and troops contributing countries to provide for example 20 cars, 30 weapons etc and be self sustained in medical, logistics backing for own troops and the UN will reimburse and at the end of the operation Ghana will park home whatever we leased to UN. There is this clause which states that the troop contributing country will have to honor 85% of the MOU to qualify for reimbursement. Ghana always provides about 84% or less, operates with the items without reimbursement. People [in authority] should be charged and tried for causing financial loses to the state.

4. Nobody wants to sacrifice life

It is an open secret in the GAF today that nobody want to sacrifice life for anything because of the notion that it is a curse to die in service? Why? Nobody cares about your family after a soldier dies. The nation only pays lip service. We have seen it all. No amount of political talk will change our mind set-up. Nobody takes us for a ride anymore.

Please take note we have matured and are well exposed. We don’t believe in coup. Instead of coup we will continue to resign prematurely because we love this dear nation Ghana and will not do anything to destroy her beauty.

For our leaders, remember this, what ever you tell us, we listen but we don’t believe anything you say.

To the nation, keep on praying for Ghana and our leaders. People are just gambling with the security of this nation in the name of politics.
If our leaders do not speak the truth, we will reveal more rots. Above issues are facts.

God bless Ghana.
Duke York & co (Member of GAF)

[NB: The writer(s) wish to remain anonymous for fear of intimidation and eventual punishment, because, according to them, the last time a group of Kosovo peacekeepers made their grievances public, some scapegoats were dismissed]