A former National Chairperson of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Freddie Blay, is strongly against requests for the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to seek approval before investing in businesses.

According to Freddie Blay, SSNIT operates autonomously and has its own board of competent personnel capable of making and taking its own decisions on any issue.

Reacting to a concern by Organised Labour that its representatives present on the SSNIT board voted against SSNIT’s sale of the hotels, the former NPP National Chairman explained that four members on a board cannot make decisions for the entire board.

“SSNIT decided to get involved with hotel management and purchased some hotels... I don’t believe they want to consult TUC before they do that... When you have a decision and they take a decision, the decision is binding; it is one decision... I will be surprised if four members of a board are taking a decision that we don’t want one hotel to be sold,” Freddie Blay said in a report on 3news.com.

He added that he has been informed that the decision to sell the hotels was in the pipeline as far back as 2015 when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was in power.

He explained, “I can’t question the decision of SSNIT because government-appointed members. I don’t have any problem with that if they decide that as a policy... indeed I’m not too sure when they decided, some tell me that they decided to dispose of it as far back as 2015, 2016 when NDC was in office.”

Mr. Blay stressed that he would have purchased the hotels being sold if he had the financial muscle.

A large number of protesters embarked on a peaceful demonstration on the streets of Accra on 18 June 2024 to press home their demand for the government to halt the sale of a 60 per cent stake in four hotels owned by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to Rock City Hotel, owned by the Food and Agriculture Minister, Bryan Acheampong.

The hotels include Labadi Beach Hotel, La Palm Royal Beach Resort, Elmina Beach Resort, Ridge Royal Hotel, Busua Beach Resort, and Trust Lodge Hotel.

A post on the microblogging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has revealed the shocking number of Ghanaians seeking to migrate overseas for greener pastures.

According to Derek Nii Laryea, a popular digital entrepreneur, 63,375 residents of Ghana applied for a Canada visa from January to April 2024. The number of applicants for the first quarter of 2024 exceeded the total number of applicants for the year 2023.

In 2023, a total of 62,151 persons applied for a Canada visa, out of which 33,756 were approved.

In his tweet, he wrote, “Canada visa applications in Ghana. 2021: 9,109, 2023: 62,151. Of these, 33,756 were approved, reflecting a substantial rise in interest and acceptance rates. 2024 Jan to April: 63,375.

“The first 4 months surpassed the total number of applications for the entire previous year.

“Approval numbers for January and February were relatively strong, with 6,241 and 5,826 approvals respectively. However, March and April experienced significant drops, with approvals falling to 3,749 in March and further to 3,001 in April. It seems IRCC is tightening the criteria.”

EAN/BB

Watch the latest edition of BizTech below:



Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.

Click here to follow the GhanaWeb Business WhatsApp channel