NIC demands dismissal of boss

Employees of the National Insurance Commission (NIC) are demanding the immediate removal of their boss, Madam Lydia Bawa.

A three-page petition to the President, signed by the employees, who described themselves as the Concerned Staff of the Commission, insisted that Miss Lydia Bawa should be sacked to ensure that “she does not get away with the massive corruption and looting of the institution.”

Some reasons for their request were that Miss Bawa used the commission’s resources to fund the acquisition of her private residence at East Legon.

According to the workers, she allegedly used the commission’s resources to “pay for a borehole as well as procure a huge generator for the private residence, and carried out massive renovation of the residence including total re-roofing.”

Miss Bawa also reportedly used the commission’s resource to carry out the entire renovation of her private property in her hometown.

The employees claimed she has given one of the commission’s vehicles to her daughter who works with the Bank of Ghana, while “staff struggle for access to official vehicles for official assignments.”

The employees alleged that she “writes and signs a number of contracts and agreements with the help of some staff of the commission without senior management’s involvement as it used to be the case before she arrived at the commission.”

They cited an example of her own accommodation contract which involved the payment for a borehole, generator and re-roofing of the house, which was supposed to have been rented by the commission for her, as one of those contracts.

The petition said when Miss Bawa was appointed commissioner in 2013, she used her new position to compel SIC to treat her departure as an act of retrenchment so SIC was forced to pay a huge retrenchment package to her, adding that “immediately she became Commissioner, Miss Bawa moved all the Commission’s insurances from SIC to GLICO where her husband is the Managing Director.”