How Unruly SIC Boss Defied SIC

…Employed Unqualified Personnel To Man Mampong SIC Office
… Refused To Vacate Official Residence 27 Months After Transfer

It has emerged in a gross show of power-flexing that has made her look larger-than-SIC Company Limited that, the embattled Kumasi Area Manager of the leading insurance Company Ms. Lariba Bawa defied established orders of Management, to employ unqualified personnel to man sensitive positions at the Asante Mampong branch of the Company.
That apparent snub in the face of the rules governing the engagement of agents and the employment of staff by the Parent SIC, gave the Kumasi Area boss a false sense of self-importance for after all she was able to turn down qualified people who ought to have been appointed in her choice’s stead, with all impunity damn the consequences.
According to credible sources close to Ms. Lariba Bawa, a memo authored by her and dated August 5, 2011 was dispatched from her Kumasi end to the headquarters in Accra, requesting a certain Ms Matilda Avoka to be engaged on contract to man the Asante Mampong office of SIC.
When the Human Resource office at the headquarters scrutinized the applicant’s SSSCE and HND certificates as well as her medical report, it turned out that by the score on her SSSCE certificate the applicant did not possess the requisite qualification to occupy the said office.
It emerged from Ms. Avoka’s SSSCE certificate that she failed in all the subjects she wrote, even though the basic entry requirement is five SSSCE/GCE O’ Level with credit in English and Mathematics. Checks conducted by THE GHANAIAN SUN indicates that SIC normally give concession to applicants who possess at least three credits in three subjects to be engaged on contract basis.
It sounded and appeared so clear that by the Company’s established academic requirements which Ms. Lariba Bawa cannot claim to be ignorant of, the applicant’s (Ms. Avoka) academic credentials did not qualify her to be engaged as an officer, let alone be placed for contract purposes by the SIC.
Given the fact of the matter and obvious variance at play, the SIC directed Ms. Bawa to identity and appoint a qualified person for the post in order not to bring the name of the Company (SIC) into disrepute. However, notwithstanding the directives, Ms. Bawa vowed not to take instructions from the management and as at press time yesterday, Avoka was still at post as the contract clerk for Asante Mampong drawing a handsome salary from the office chest.
As if this was not enough, Ms. Lariba Bawa has gone ahead to engage another person by name Ms. Bushira Osman whom she has attached to her secretariat since August 2011, just around the time she engaged Avoka at the Mampong office drawing a salary of GH¢120 per month. Veritable sources say this too was without approval from the head office in Accra.
Yet another damnable record of hers is that in June 2001 she was transferred to the head office in Accra from Tema. However Bawa refused to vacate her Tema official bungalow meant for the incoming Manager.
On September 19, 2001 she was written to and given two weeks to handover the bungalow to the Tema Manager but she refused to comply. In a letter dated 23rd October 2002, Ms. Bawa was again asked to vacate the Tema official residence, over a year of over-staying.
She however indicated in a letter dated 27th November 2002 that she was prepared to vacate the residence on condition that management could find her an alternative. But in a sharp retort, management responded by reminding Ms. Bawa that it has never been the policy of the Company to look for accommodation for staff who do not have duty post accommodation.
Incensed and in all sorts of moods, management reminded she-who-is-to-be-obeyed that the Company has been generous to her by granting her a credit facility by acquiring one of SIC’s residential property situated at Accra’s suburban Taifa.
Our checks showed that repayment of the Taifa facility was supposed to have been effected by December 2001 but Bawa failed to comply with management’s order. She only moved out of the residential bungalow after he tied management’s hands to offer her financial assistance by way of loan in addition to rent allowance of 20% of basic minimum given her.
By 15th January 2002 which the deadline should have been met, she still refused to obey legitimate instructions, after management had advanced the loan and allowance to her for the purpose of renting.
A final reminder to Ms. Bawa on 22nd January 2003, instructed her to vacate the residence by 31st January 2003. However, she refused until 22nd July 2003 when she eventually vacated the premises, after 27 months of resistance to lawful authority.
Coming up yet again sometime next week is how an officer of SIC turned herself into a consultant and extorted money from a cocoa purchasing company which culminated in the Company’s management withdrawing its major businesses from SIC. …THE SUN


Fake Rice Hits Ghana’s Markets
By Kofi Safo-Antwi
So determined to swim in a sea of profits while ripping-off unsuspecting buyers of their monies, crooks operating from locations along the Spintex Road in Accra appear hell-bent on driving the rice industry straight into a ditch this Christmas, THE GHANAIAN SUN can reveal today.
Consequently sacks with prints of favourable brand names such as SUNDIATA, ROYAL FEAST, SAVANNAH, BLUE BIRD, THAI JASMINE RICE, THAI UMBRELLA RICE, RUBY, PHOENIX, BLACK JEWEL and the like attract a handsome pricing, once they can be delivered to the rogues in pretty good condition such that re-bagging may not give the game away.
Slippery tongues who have developed the pattern of playing the inquisitive monkey who had a bullet in the face have told THE GHANAIAN SUN that, the lowest grades of rice (in certain cases declared unfit for human consumption) are stashed into the bags and sewed neatly and professionally, in order to escape its detection by the most prying of eyes.
“They are then packed in commercial quantities and loaded onto trucks and dispatched to scores of stores for sale to the unsuspecting public,” one source told THE GHANAIAN SUN as the paper was on the prowl to ascertain the authenticity or otherwise of the goings-on.
Some patrons of some brands THE GHANAIAN SUN spoke to complained that, quite apart from the fact of some rice appearing in broken form, the grades are just too low that there is little doubt some of them are fit only for consumption by poultry animals.
The paper discovered a number of bags of rice so cleverly sewed whose inner stuff could possibly not match the quality writings on the sacks-claim otherwise, there would have been no need to open the sack for re-sewing at the premise as claimed by witnesses.
With a full bag of rice on the markets averaging 160 Ghana Cedis, it now confounds most consumers who end up with raw deals how else The Ghana Standards Board, and The Food And Drugs Board seem to sit idly by for crooks of such nature to have a field day, in landing massive profits?
Indeed with the Christmas season fast approaching, smart crooks, it appears the crooks know in the fibre of their being that rice sales will soar to the high heavens, and therefore continued dozing by the relevant authorities could lead to a catastrophe, if they drag their feet a shade late in a rescue mission.
THE GHANAIAN SUN learnt while on the investigative growl that not too long ago, the nation used to spend a colossal $500 million on rice importation until the advent of the ruling NDC, when so much talk was made of growing and eating local rice. However, the sudden appearance of low quality grades of rice ought to be a teasing challenge to the nation’s law-enforcers that, unwholesomeness has landed on Ghanaian markets.
The end result is that rice brands of the more popular kinds are duplicated with cheeky ease, and once buyers do not wise-up early enough to differentiate good from bad among the brands, rice buying in the stores will be business as usual.
The other day THE GHANAIAN SUN acting on prompts from a source, learned of a 24-hour shift in a Lebanese-controlled rice warehouse along the Spintex Road, where milling and stuffing machines that supposedly undertake the clandestine venture were sited.
But as Christmas inches closer and closer every day, it becomes incumbent on our security agencies that they need not clasp their hands and sit idly by because, if rice has to be eaten its qualitative taste and excellent nutritional values have to be distinct from the crap the rogues are bagging, popularly called TI GYIMI.