<\/p>\n
Samuel Okudzeto\u00a0Ablakwa<\/strong><\/p>\n MANAGEMENT OF the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has denounced comments by the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto\u00a0Ablakwa, on the payment of Board of Directors\u2019 fees and allowances, describing them as misleading.<\/p>\n The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP, on April 12, 2022, posted on his Facebook<\/em> page that officials of COCOBOD, in one financial year, paid to themselves an amount of GH\u00a2656,200\u00a0 as \u201csitting, inconvenience, and overnight allowances,\u201d and termed the development as \u201cunpatriotic illegality.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy should it ever be an inconvenience to be called to serve your country? Should that not be the greatest honour? In any case, who put a gun to anybody\u2019s head to accept an appointment to the Ghana Cocoa Board? Also, what animal is overnight allowance?<\/p>\n \u201cThe Auditor-General has described these fees and allowances as illegal because, the Finance Minister has not granted approval as required under Section 9(6) of the Ghana Cocoa Board Act of 1984 as amended; sadly though, the looting continues,\u201d Mr. Ablakwa wrote on his wall.<\/p>\n But in a response, the COCOBOD said it had observed with \u201cworry the continuous discussion of a portion of the\u00a02018 Auditor-General\u2019s report by the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto\u00a0Ablakwa, in the media and subsequent reportage on his commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven though Parliament, as an institution is yet to consider the report, the MP has resorted to\u00a0discussions on the matter, and in some cases making non-existing inferences from the report, only to\u00a0mislead the listening and reading public,\u201d COCOBOD said in a statement.<\/p>\n The statement explained that the Board of Directors, in 2017, upon swearing-in, inherited the board\u2019s fees and allowance regime, and that this became the basis for the payment of allowances to members of the board.<\/p>\n On the issue of inconvenience allowance, COCOBOD stated that members were paid a tax-inclusive amount of GH\u00a21,500\u00a0for off-site meetings, and added that the Ministry of Finance later issued a new remuneration regime, which did not include board fees\u00a0and inconvenience allowances.<\/p>\n \u201cCOCOBOD, in compliance with the new regime, has since stopped the payment of board fees and\u00a0inconvenience allowances,\u201d it stated, indicating, \u201cWe shall continue to comply with the board\u2019s remuneration regime as directed by the Ministry of\u00a0Finance.\u201d<\/p>\n BY Ernest Kofi Adu<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Samuel Okudzeto\u00a0Ablakwa MANAGEMENT OF the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has denounced comments by the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto\u00a0Ablakwa, on the payment of Board of Directors\u2019 fees and allowances, describing them as misleading. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP, on April 12, 2022, posted on his Facebook page that officials of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1068303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[2198,10377,182,3379,808],"class_list":["post-1068302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-ablakwa","tag-chides","tag-cocobod","tag-comments","tag-misleading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}