Sacked Korle-Bu HR director fights back

Sacked Director of Human Resources (HR) at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), Tahir Abdul-Islam Mahmoud, has petitioned the then Minister of Health against the decision of the hospital’s Board to remove him.

In a long petition dated May 24, 2014 and sent to the then Minister of Health, Sherry Ayittey, Tahir Abdul-Islam Mahmoud claims he was victimized by the Board Chairman Eddie Annan and Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Reverend Albert Okpoti Botchwey who has been relieved of his post.

The HR director was sacked after a committee report cited him for insubordination.

He wants full compensation for wrongful termination of his appointment.  

Even though his appointment  did not have terminal clause indicating when his term of office would specifically end, Mahmoud claims he was virtually frustrated and hounded out of post for allegedly refusing to kowtow to their demands for the employ­ment of party faithful and church members.

In the said petition he stated, “He” (referring to Rev. Okpoti Botchwey) “had at several meetings with me (some in the pres­ence of his so-called con­stituency members), sought to order me to employ so-called con­stituency members, his church members (indeed there is proof one church member is currently at post) which I had conve­niently ignored.”

According to the embattled HR Director, it was for this reason that he was seen as an obstacle to the CEO’s political ambi­tion.

He also accused the Board Chairman of directly interfering in the appoint­ment of the Deputy Head of the Human Resource Department who he (Mah­moud) alleged is a relative or family friend of Eddie Annan.

He claimed the Deputy HR head “did not meet the criteria for the appointment even by the terms of our adverts in the media (and indeed was at the same level as the least qualified of my HR Man­agers in terms of compe­tence, as later events showed.”

The petition under­scored, “The short-listing of the gentleman was done by the then Acting Chief Executive (a protégé of the present one) without my knowledge and I was at several meetings with the Board Chairman who was coerced to accept the gen­tleman and teach him on the job”, he narrated.

In one of such instances, the removed Director of Human Resource stated, “The Board Chairman sought to prevent me from acting as secretary to the panel that interviewed candidates for the position of the current Director of Finance (anoth­er pre-ordained staff) and indeed he ordered me out of the interview room after the interview” and “later presented with a pencil- written score sheet and ordered to prepare a report.”

Aside that, Mahmoud stressed that his protest against procedural errors in the elevation of the Personal Assistant of the then Acting CEO to the position of Deputy Director in a memo also accounted for his dismissal.

According to him, “this [protest] was interpreted by the Board Chairman as a challenge to his authority because he was instrumen­tal in approving the appointment.”

He also saw his refusal to prepare an appointment letter for what he described as the ‘illegal appointment’ of Godfred Ahianyo as a board member. He noted that the appointment raised concerns among staff of the hospital.

The sacked Director of Human Resources Department of the nation’s premier hospital is therefore seeking a revocation of the supposed committee report which cited him for insubordination and investigations into same, while asking for full compensation for wrongful termination of his appointment.