Assembly members
of the Ho Municipal Assembly have petitioned the Volta Regional Minister, over
an alleged financial misappropriation at the assembly.
It also called into question the conduct of the
Presiding Member, Eric Seyram, who allegedly ‘vetoed’ the discontinuity of the
work of a committee set up to implement the recommendation of an earlier
investigative committee.
Samuel
Bewiadzi, Assembly member for Hofedo electoral area, handing over the report of
the investigative committee and the petition to the Regional Minister, Dr
Archibald Letsa, said the assembly at its last sitting, formed an investigative
committee to look into the financial stance of the assembly, since 2016.
He said findings revealed that activities of
some officials were draining the assembly financially and recommended immediate
transfer of two key officials while stressing that “The open theft and
day-light robbery of finances of the assembly led to the inability of the entity
to even implement a one-capital project from an accrued internally generated fund
of over GH₵ 300,000.
“Based on findings and others, the assembly also unanimously recommended
some key assembly staff, who had spent more than four years of their service to
be transferred, while the implementation committee was carrying out its
mandate, Mr Seyram allegedly wrote to committee, stopping them from carrying
out their mandate,” Mr Bewiadzi bemoaned.
He appealed to Dr Letsa to intervene and protect
the assembly from “total collapse from the hands of the Presiding Member
and his surrogates and demanded full cooperation from the management of the assembly
to enable all recommendations to be fully implemented”.
When contacted, Mr Seyram vehemently denied the
allegations and insisted that he was ready for any investigation saying,
“I called for the committee to halt its work based on the recommendation of
a sub-committee which realised an administrative error in the composition of
the implementation committee.”
Dr Letsa
commended the petitioners for setting up a bipartisan committee to look into
the affairs of the assembly they served, and promised to act on the petition.
Some aggrieved assembly members who spoke on anonymity, stated that the assembly was over-burdened with cases of conflict of interest where civil servants posed as companies to bid for contracts at the assembly, and also alleged that some staff were manipulating the system to dole out huge allowances to themselves for unjustified meetings and workshops. -gna.org
