MP entangled in Qatar job saga

Iddrisu Zakari, the National Democratic Party(NDC) MP for Walewale, has been accused of taking exorbitant fees for procuring passports for some of the stranded Ghanaian migrant workers in Qatar

A number of Ghanaians mostly from his constituency, who joined the trip to Qatar to seek employment with a construction company, Al-Jabal, say they went through the MP. But what is serious about the narration of some of the job seekers is their account of having to pay a staggering ¢1million cedis to the MP as fee for the processing of their passports.

“I went to his house at Sakumono with a friend and paid one million cedis to him personally for him to process my passport for me.

He told me that that was the cost for him to get me the passport, so I paid and after two weeks I met him and took the passport from him. I know other people who also paid the same amount to the MP,” one of the people who returned from the trip recently but did not want his name publicized, told the paper.

In an interview with Mr. Zakari in Parliament last Thursday, he confirmed having procured passports for some of the people, especially those from his constituency but denied taking a million cedis each from some of them. “I helped most of them who were from my constituency, sometimes with my own money. So how can I take one million from them for their passports? It is true that most of them went through me or with my consent,” he observed.

He told the paper that Mr. Abubakr Rahman, Director of Rahman Consultancy, the firm that did the recruitment for the Qatar job, was his brother and that even before the Qatar project he had been asking him to try and see how he could help get jobs for the youth in his constituency.

“So when this project came, I helped a lot of people from my area to get the opportunity. I had to rent places for some of the people who came and did not have places in Accra as well as catering for their meals. So if someone is suggesting that I took that amount of money from him, it is not true,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, The Chronicle has gathered that the striking Ghanaian workers have agreed to return to work after some deliberations with the management of the construction company.

Abdul Aziz, one of the workers told the paper yesterday that they had decided to resume work after they had had discussions over their plight. He said they were however still waiting for a promised government intervention on the matter.