Kwesi Pratt blasts EC; Pay your staff

The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has called on the electoral commission (EC) to ensure monies are released for the payment of its non-permanent staff.

His plea comes after reports that the electoral commission of Ghana has still not paid its casual workers even though the commission has already received GH? 262,256,525 representing 91.5% of the total amount of money that was needed to conduct the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections.

These non-permanent staff of the EC, who supervised the conduct of the elections, numbering over 130,000, are recruited to support the EC during general elections.

However, delays in payment of casual workers of the electoral commission after elections, is not new as far as the EC is concerned since there were similar agitations after past elections.

The outspoken journalist who was contributing as a panelist on Metro TV’s “Good Morning Ghana” program, said he was of the view that the EC should have paid the workers by now giving the amount of money they have received so far and the fact that most of them worked for an extra day.

On the issue of the EC opening up for the public to know exactly who the temporary workers are, before employing them to conduct elections to ensure fairness in the conduct of the EC’s work, Mr. Pratt stated that; “ every Ghanaian has a right to insist on transparency in appointing people to public office,” but quickly added that; “fairness in elections is guaranteed by the parties themselves taking an active interest in recruiting agents who know what they are about.”