President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was insincere with the figures he submitted to parliament as the list of persons working at the presidency, Mr Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, opposition Member of Parliament for South Dayi, has said.

According to him, the number of workers at the seat of government is 1,697 according to government’s own figures in the 2018 budget and not 998 as presented to parliament.

Nana Akufo-Addo presented the list last week in compliance with Section 11 of the Presidential Office Act, 1993 (Act 463), which requires the president to submit annually to parliament, a report on the staffing of the presidency.

The president’s critics say the number will overburden the national purse.

Speaking on 12Live on Class91.3FM on Monday, 23 April 2018, Mr Dafeamekpor said some names have been omitted from the list.

He said: “We have six more names in the office of the Senior Minister that haven’t featured on the list. We have my own friend Nii Teiko Tagoe who is the Director of Social Media at the Office of the Presidency whose name hasn’t featured on the list and a host of other names at other departments under the office of the presidency who have been deliberately taken out of the list.”

He noted that in appendix seven of the 2017 budget statement, “The government gave an indication that the total list of employees that they have for 2017 was 963 but from the letter that has been sent to parliament in respect of the total number of employees at the office of the president, it is 998 and we know that the names that I have mentioned, if you add them to the list, they’ve reached the 1000 barrier.”

He continued: “We are going by the government’s own numbers. If I refer you to the 2018 budget statement, ironically, the same appendix seven, if you look at the total number of employees for 2018 for which budgetary allocation have been made for staff of office of the president, it comes to 1697. This is not a figure we are concocting”.