General News of Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Source: starrfmonline.com

CHRAJ gate: Calls for my resignation borne out of ignorance – C’ssner

The Commissioner of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Lauretta Vivian Lamptey, says her critics who are pushing for her resignation concerning the rent saga are ignorant of her job.

Financial Analyst Sydney Casely-Hayford and Franklin Cudjoe, Founder of policy Think Tank, IMANI Ghana, are among those calling for Lamptey’s resignation for failing to investigate numerous high-profile corruption cases in the country.

Lamptey has also come under severe pressure to vacate her post following revelations that over US$203,500 US dollars has been spent on renovating her official residence.

She is currently lodging at a hotel and paying the Cedi equivalent of $456.25 per day.

But Lamptey told STARR NEWS in an interview that calls for her dismissal or resignation are borne out of ignorance.

According to her, she spends 95 per cent of her time working on CHRAJ’s core duty of protecting human rights.

“They always reveal lack of knowledge of how CHRAJ operates. We don’t get up and investigate simply because of a rumour. There must be a little bit more," Lamptey said Tuesday.

She added that: “What I find really objectionable is that 95 percent of our work and my time is on human rights…so it doesn’t mean that corruption is not important.

“[Corruption] is the most important thing in the Ghanaian public’s eye but I took over a commission which is a commission of human rights and we do have human rights issues and there [are] thousands of issues that we handle every month."