General News of Friday, 26 July 2013

Source: peacefmonline

AMA Boss must resign or be sacked - Kwesi Pratt

Mr Alfred Oko Vanderpuiye has been asked to voluntarily resign from his post following a blunder he committed by renaming the National Hockey Pitch.

Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt says if he doesn’t resign voluntarily, then President Mahama should make him resign.

“We need to be careful; otherwise, Oko Vanderpuiye will name everything in this country. To them, any facility under their jurisdiction; they have power over it, but it does not work like that. Accra is the nation’s capital… National Sports facility cannot be under AMA; it is impossible. So he should have been careful…”

The decision by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to rename the National Hockey Stadium to honour the memory of the late President, John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, has been met with national outrage leading to a presidential order asking the Accra Mayor to overturn his decision.

“I will be very happy if he (Oko Vanderpuiye) resigns voluntarily. However, if he doesn’t he should be asked to resign… because this is not the first time such a thing is being done by the same person. What he did was against the law and he cannot just go back to his post and pretend as if nothing has happened. I don’t see how the contributions of Madam Okoh will be inferior to that of Atta Mills…” he told Kwami Sefa-Kayi on Friday's edition of Kokrokoo.

The Managing Editor attributed the posture of the Mr Alfred Oko Vanderpuiye to the title he is currently using: ‘Accra Mayor’. He said because he is using that title, ‘he feels he has more power to change anything under his municipality’.

“Alfred Oko Vanderpuiye is not the Mayor of Accra; he is the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE)”.

Kwesi Pratt has pleaded with President John Dramani Mahama to complete the work he has started; that is “going further from asking him to rescind his decision to asking him to resign. That is what should happen…his time is up; he should go.”