Former flagbearer of the defunct Independent People’s Party (IPP) now Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG) Percival Kofi Akpaloo believes the beleaguered former COCOBOD CEO Dr Stephen Kwabena Opuni deserves the GH¢70,000 monthly salary.

He wondered why the technical trainer of the Black Stars will earn $50,000 a month but same cannot be said about the head of an institution like COCOBOD.

“If you want to be fair and sincere do a background check as to how much CEOs from Vodafone, MTN, Stanchart, etc are earning in Ghana. You will find out there’s nothing wrong paying a CEO of COCOBOD $15,000 a month.

Let’s move away from pettiness politics”, he told mynewsgh.com in an exclusive interview.

The new Board Chairman of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, on Tuesday made revelations about how much the CEO of COCOBOD receives as monthly salary describing it as “outrageous” which ought to be slashed.

“COCOBOD is a state institution. It cannot be taken out of the context of the overall remuneration structure and within the executive and those ancillary services,” Mr. Owusu-Agyeman asserted on Citi Eyewitness News.

Mr. Owusu-Agyeman has indicated that even after the planned cut in salaries, some of the top management will still earn more that the highest paid article 71 office holders which is pegged at GH¢ 22,000.

“For me, it is absolutely unthinkable that the gross salary of the Chief Executive Officer should be in the neighbourhood of GH¢70,000 to GH¢ 75,000 a month, and the net is about G GH¢55, 000 to GH¢ 57,000 a month.

If you even discount this by 50 percent, it would still be higher than anybody under article 71 of the constitution,” he noted.

The new COCOBOD Chair said the fact that the salary of the COCOBOD Chief Executive Officer dwarfed the President’s salary was problematic given that “at the end of the day, we have to be able to say that the work that is being done is getting reasonable levels of remuneration commensurate with the work that they do, and also within the context of the Ghanaian economy.”