Leader of the over 4,000 ex-workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) who have not received their benefits after they were retrenched in 2002, has dismissed former president John Mahama’s act of empathy towards one of the victims of the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence, as fake.

In an interview with journalists on the sidelines of the annual Kpeledzoo festival in Tema, Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei said the visit to Ishao Yaro and the demand the former president placed on president Akufo-Addo to pay compensation to him are all gimmicks for cheap political points.

“As a former worker of the GPHA who has not received my severance benefits since our retrenchment in 2002, I can tell you first-hand that Mr. John Mahama did not mean any of the nice words he spoke on camera,” the man who is affectionately called Moshake said.

According to him, “I say this because this is the same John Maham who ignored us the GPHA ex-workers even though former president Mills had issued a fiat for us to be paid. I tell you, his sympathy to Ishao Yaro is fake.”

The declaration is a response to former President John Mahama’s recent promise to Ishao Yaro that if he becomes president, his government will compensate him.

Mr. John Mahama had made the promise while visiting Ishao Yaro who has been maimed from the gun violence that erupted during the by-election at Ayawaso West Wuogon in January 2017.

It was at this same visit that the former president also called on President Akufo-Addo to pay compensation to the victim.

However, according to Moshake, the former president’s sympathies are a fake ploy to win the sympathies of voters.

“If Mr. John Mahama is truly this sympathetic, then why did he ignore the GPHA ex-workers when their case came before him? Look, some of them have died of melancholy because they could not even take care of their basic needs due to abject poverty”.

Again Moshake asked why the former president has not consciously taken up the challenge to care for the maimed man if he really cares.

“Mr. John Mahama cannot tell me that he does not have the wherewithal to look after Ishao Yaro if he really cares as he claims, because he collected his fat ex-gratia and has been collecting his presidential salary every month, so why has he not?”

Recently, the former President also said he will decouple the Ministry of Youth and Sports so that the affairs of the country’s youth can be well catered for. But to this, Moshake asked rhetorical questions.

“Why did he not do it when he was president from 2012 to 2016?” he asked.

According to the GPHA ex-workers leader, the former president is making grandiloquent promises such as these because he is in opposition and wants power.

“Nobody should be fooled – this is the same John Mahama who did not implement even one good youth policy when he was president,” Moshake said.

He urged the youth in the opposition NDC too to ignore Mr. John Mahama as well because his track record shows that he does not care about the youth.

“The NDC youth should remember that this is the same John Mahama who told them that they cannot be employed into national security because they do not have degrees.”