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General News of Thursday, 7 June 2012

Source: FRONT PAGE Newspaper

Parliament Staff Go Wild

(Pt. 1)

…Over give-out of apartments to cronies of “Big Men“

By Sammy Agyei

Signals picked up within the workers of the Parliament House of Ghana by Front Page indicates that there is growing anger among the which could lead to unpleasant happeniings at the nation’s Legislature.

The workers are annoyed because they do not understand why the official bungalows meant for them have been rented out by some of their colleagues to make money while they continue to struggle to get accommodation. They lamented that there are a number of Parliamentary workers who are finding it very difficult getting accommodation, and had repeated been pleading with the authorities in Parliament to find them accommodation to make them enjoy some peace of mind to go about thier work. “We are living in a two-bedroom apartment provided by the Parliament as workers but some of our co-workers have rented their apartments to outsiders while some have also given it to their relatives and staying elsewhere,” one of the workers lamented.

The workers continued that even though some of the workers had put up their own houses and moved into them, they had failed to hand over the keys to the officials, and rather rented or given out the buildings to outsiders, relatives and friends.

A painstaking investigation conducted by this reporter revealed a list of names of persons from the Sakumono and Manet Estates which is in possession of the Front Page newspaper who have either rented out or given their apartments to people who are not workers of Parliament.

Some of the accused persons confirmed the reports, explainging that they had not rented out the houses, but given them out to their relatives who are not workers of Parliament.

When contacted on phone for his comments, the Public Affairs Director of Parliament, Mr. Jones Kugblenu, said the official position taken by the House is that all staffs who have been allocated with bungalows are supposed to live in them with their families.

He added that if a staff feels he cannot stay there any longer and is moving out, the proper thing to do is to hand over the keys to the committee which oversees the accommodation issues.

Stay tune for a more on this.