Rural Bank has no cash to pay workers

Ekumfi Essuehyia(Central Region) 15 April ?99

A large number of workers who receive their salaries through Ekumfiman Rural Bank at Essuehyia in the Central region have not yet received their salaries for March because the bank has run short of cash. The workers, mostly teachers, have, therefore, appealed to the Controller and Accountant-General to stop sending their salaries to the bank with immediate effect.

They have also appealed to the Bank of Ghana to intervene and pay them their salary for March since life is becoming unbearable. "Schools are on vacation and we need money to visit our parents and relations," some teachers fumed. When the GNA visited the bank on Tuesday to find out more about the situation, the manager had not yet reported for work. Teachers who had called at the bank, apparently to collect their salaries, said they had visited the bank more than four times since the end of March but to no avail.

They complained that they had never met the bank manager "but the cashier keeps telling us that there is no money to pay us although we have confirmed from the Controller and Account-General's Department and the district treasury that our salaries have been sent to the bank". Mr John Duku, a teacher from the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa district, said he visited the bank four times before he was paid 30,000 cedis out of his salary for March. Miss Cynthia Hayford of Abora Ahmadiyya Primary School, Cape Coast, said after visiting the bank for the same number of times, she was given 87,000. But another teacher, Mr Louis Abban of Twaa D/C Primary School, like many others, has not received anything yet.