Three officials of two district assemblies in the Volta Region have been grabbed by officials of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for their alleged involvement in financial malfeasance and illegal recruitment of workers into the Local Government Service (LGS).
Two of them are officials of the Ketu South Municipal Assembly, while one is an official of the North Dayi District Assembly.
They have been identified as Mr Godwin K. Dzansi, the Municipal Co-ordinating Director, and Mr Simon K. Goka, the Assistant Director and Municipal Finance Officer, both of the Ketu South Municipal Assembly, and Mr John Addy, the Municipal Finance Officer of the North Dayi District Assembly, who was formerly with the Ketu South Municipal Assembly.
The three have consequently been interdicted.
A letter signed by the Head of the LGS, Dr Callistus Mahama, and addressed to the Municipal Chief Executive for Ketu South, stated: “The Local Government Service is constrained to cause the interdiction of Mr Godwin K. Dzansi, the Co-ordinating Director, and Mr Simon K. Goka, Assistant Director IIB, and the Municipal Finance Officer of the Ketu South Municipal Assembly, for gross misconduct, extortion and other malpractices.”
“The Controller and Accountant-General is kindly requested to interdict the then Municipal Finance Officer of Ketu South, John Addy, now at the North Dayi District Assembly, to pave way for investigations,” the letter stated. Investigation
Confirming the report, Dr Mahama stated that investigations by the secretariat revealed that the three officials managed to illegally recruit four persons, all revenue collectors, without authorisation, and also succeeded in back-dating their appointment letters for 17 months.
He stated further that GHc6,700 arrears resulting from the back pay due each of the four revenue collectors was extorted from them by the three.
According to Dr Mahama, all efforts made by the aggrieved revenue collectors — Mr Michael Kofi Tsagli, Mr Innocent Kofi Badagbor and Madam Mama Diaxa II — to retrieve their money proved futile, as the three officials resorted to intimidation and other tactics to ward them off.
He explained that the three officials had to be interdicted to pave the way for detailed investigations to be conducted into the case by the BNI. Aggrieved revenue collectors
A letter titled, ‘Authoritatively dishonest, insensitive and extortionist attitude of local government officials towards Ketu South Municipal revenue collectors’ and addressed to Dr Mahama blew the cover off the deals.
Mr Tsagli, Mr Badagbor and Mama Diaxa were engaged by the Ketu South Assembly as revenue collectors on April 1, 1996 but they could not be mechanised into the service when it took off in 2002.
According to them, out of the about GHc6,700 salary arrears they received, only GHc500 was released to them, while any attempt to retrieve the rest had been futile. More interdiction
In another development, three officials of the Tano North District Assembly in the Brong Ahafo Region have also been interdicted by the LGS for similar offences.
They are Mr Yaw Kankam Adjei, the Deputy Director and acting Coordinating Director; Mr Sekyere Bota, the Principal Executive Officer, and Mr Yaw Ansu, a Senior Accountant.
They are alleged to have been involved in illegal appointments, recruiting officers without the requisite qualification, backdating assumption of duty for salary claims and non-existing staff paid with the internally generated funds of the assembly.
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