The National Service Secretariat says it is prepared for any legal action resulting from its decision to revoke the appointment of personnel employed by the secretariat towards the end of the erstwhile National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) government in December 2016.
Some 205 recruits whose appointments were terminated by the Secretariat have threatened to seek redress in court over the matter.
According to them, the decision to revoke their appointment was in bad fate and not in accordance with law as they were duly employed by the immediate past administration.
The Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, Alhaji Ussif Mustapha told Citi News in an interview that the secretariat did no wrong in terminating the appointments of the new recruits.
He said his outfit is ready to argue out its case should the affected persons drag it before the law court.
“We have a legal department at the NSS and we are ready for any court battle because we know we took the decision in good fate and we are right. The recruitments were done illegal,” he said.
The National Service Scheme on Wednesday [February 8. 2017] issued a statement announcing the revocation of their appointments.
The statement said, “the management of the National Service Scheme (NSS), has on the advice of the Minister of Education, withdrawn the National Service staff recruitment which was done in December 2016 with immediate effect.”
It added that, “This decision is informed by a thorough consideration of violations of due process prior to recruitment. These included petitions to the Public Services Commission (PSC) against the recruitment process upon which the PSC in a letter dated 16th November, 2016, advised the former Ag. Executive Director to halt the recruitment process until the matter was properly resolved. This was however ignored and the appointment letters were issued to some persons on 15th December, 2016.”
It also urged the affected persons to look forward to another opportunity when it conducts a proper staff recruitment.
But the immediate past Executive director of the NSS, Dr Michael Kpessah Whyte who said the decision was wrong, urged the persons affected to go to court.
In an interview on Eyewitness News last week [Wednesday], he said, “as far as I am concerned, during our time, we followed due process to the letter and the documents are there and the new executive director and his team need to ask for them. They should go into correspondences and they should ask for all the correspondence, otherwise, I will advise the new recruits, who have been asked to stay home that if the decision is not reversed, they should take it to court, because the truth is on their side.”
A spokesperson for the sacked recruits, Edwin Afetsi, in a subsequent interview with Citi News said, they will take the matter up in court since they feel unduly targeted and punished for no reason.
“We have reviewed the situation decided that we will pursue the matter in court because we realise that we have done nothing wrong and the decision taken was not based on any proper ground so we will pursue the matter in court. We have spoken to our lawyers and hopefully next week the case may be in court. We want that illegal decision to be revoked. They should revoke their own letter that is trying to revoke our legal appointment.” he said.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
