General News of Thursday, 5 April 2001

Source: --

Hon Baah Wiredu rejects list

The private bi-weekly, 'The Ghanaian Voice' reports that the Volta region's list of personalities to be considered as government appointees to the District Assembles have been rejected.

Reason is that the Minister of local Government, Hon Kwadwo Baah Wiredu is not convinced about the manner the list was compiled, as it did not include detailed information of the personalities.

Corruption is also said to beset the election and vetting of prospective candidates for the position of District Chief Executive (DCEs).

Speculations are rife that the appointments may favour most NPP activists and these had raised questions from the District Assemblies.

This situation, which seems not to favour hot favourites, has resulted into confusion in some districts. Though, the conditions for the submission of final list for the prospective candidates for DCE positions in each district is not supposed to be more than five the whole exercise was alleged to be fraught with corruption. Information gathered by the paper at Ho indicates that the regional executives have constituted vetting committees in the various districts to discharge the function of selection and vetting prospective candidates for the DCE position and to consider others as government appointees.

This exercise had place some members of the committees in a position to go about extorting sums of monies ranging between 100,000 cedis and 300,000 cedis with the view to influence the vetting.

Many NPP supporters have complained about the composition of the so-called vetting committees in the region and questioned about he criteria used for the selection of the members. The Ho district vetting Committee chaired by Gag Seneya had come under serious criticism from various quarters to discredit the authority behind he committee.