First and second lady of Ghana Rebecca Akuffo-Addo and Samira Bawumia
Executive-Secretary of the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), Mensah Thompson has revealed that the Civil Society organization will file an action at the Supreme Court to challenge recommendations to pay the wives of the President and Vice salaries.
“We are going to the Supreme Court to challenge it. We were only going to speak about the writ after it was filed on Friday. Our lawyers are working on the writ now and we hoped to share copies to the media on Friday,” he told Happy 98.9FM’s Don Kwabena Prah.
According to him, Article 71 of the constitution speaks about the setting up of the salaries and emoluments commission. “The commission is to review salaries and emoluments for article 71 office holders only. The constitution goes on to tell us who is a part of these article 71 office holders and we all know the wives of the President and vice are not captured.”
He added that the position of 1st and 2nd ladies are not even recognized under the law. “So how can we set up a committee to review salaries of article 71 office holders and then came back with recommendations to pay the 1st and 2nd ladies salaries?”
He described the action of the committee as illegal saying, “the committee didn’t have the right to make such a recommendation.”
Mensah Thompson added that ASEPA will file an interlocutory injunction on the recommendation and rather the wives of the President and vice receive allowances and not be put on salaries. “Even the allowances were instituted at the benevolence of the state.
But if they want to move from allowances to salaries, then they have to send a Legislative Instrument (LI) to parliament to amend the constitution and have their roles spelled out. If you have no role spelt out by the constitution then why do you need to be put on salaries that equals that of cabinet ministers?”
The ASEPA boss insists he holds no grudges against the wives of the President and vice but “they do nothing for the state to warrant them receiving salaries,” he said on the Epa Hoa Daben political talk show.
The spouses of the President and Vice President will from now onward officially enjoy salaries from the Government of Ghana.
This was after the government adopted a recommendation by an emolument committee which was approved by the seventh parliament.
The new arrangement will see the spouses of the first and second gentlemen officially being paid salaries which is a departure from the previous practice of paying them allowances.