A group called the Concerned National Service Personnel has threatened to picket the Flagstaff House to protest the delay in the payment of their service allowance.
The group has given government up to Monday, 23 October, 2017 to at least pay them their September allowance or face their wrath.
According to the group, they are yet to receive their allowance after they were posted in September this year for their mandatory national service.
Over 90,000 personnel are currently serving in different sectors of the economy for the 2017/2018 service year. But they are yet to receive any allowance; a situation the convener for the group, William Agbodo, says is making life unbearable for personnel.
Speaking to Class News, Mr Agbodo noted that they would go any length to ensure they receive what is due them, including picketing the seat of government.
He said: “As the norm, the government normally pays monthly salary to service persons and we were of the hope that as soon as we submit our duty forms, not sooner than later, we will be paid. But we’ve been waiting all this while, we are in October now and we have no hope of when we are going to be paid. So we are impressing on government to try to make sure that at least if nothing at all, our September allowance should be paid to us because the hardship in the country is unbearable.
“So if we are going without such allowance, how do we survive at our work places? We are not demanding much, we are just demanding our allowance which is not that much compared to what other public servants are now enjoying. We are giving them up to 23rd [October] of which we are just hoping that by then, government will listen to our cry and honour its role by paying us, if nothing at all, September allowance. But if they fail to do so, national service personnel across the country are willing and ready to picket the Flagstaff House sooner than later.”
Meanwhile, Director for Public Relations at the National Service Secretariat, Ambrose Antsewaa, explaining the reason for the delay, said: “The truth of the matter is that every year when we do postings, we don’t pay the first month, it is not practicable. The process takes time and every year before we do the postings, we do the pre-service all campus orientation and we do tell them that once you start the service, the first month, you will not be getting your allowance.
“Normally, it is at the end of the second month that you will receive your allowance because we will have to do what we call validation and make sure that everybody who has been posted has reported and is at work and ensure auditors go through the auditing. Let’s not forget that sometimes, after posting, we also do change of postings so if we are not careful, we will get people posted to two or three places at the same time so we need to clean the system and make sure all those things have been done.
“There is money to pay them, but we need to ensure that everybody is served before we pay them. So the auditors are almost at the tail end of the auditing process and we hope by the close of this month, we should be able to finish and pay them.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
