North Tongu Member of Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has criticised President Akufo-Addo’s approach to addressing the opposition to the controversial sale of four hotels by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to Rock City Hotels Limited, owned by Agriculture Minister, Bryan Acheampong.
Although organised labour is represented by four members on the 12-member board of SSNIT, President Akufo-Addo has asked the Labour and Employment Minister to engage them again on their concerns regarding the transaction.
Organised Labour had petitioned the president to halt the sale of the hotels to the minister cum Member of Parliament.
According to Ablakwa, the president’s directive to the Employment and Labour Relations Minister, Ignatius Baffour Awuah to engage with labour leaders is unnecessary.
He argues that the president is avoiding his responsibility and pretending he lacks the authority to resolve this issue with a single directive.
In an interview on the Joy Super Morning Show on Thursday, May 30, Mr Ablakwa stated, “What we want the president to do is to ask his appointees to stop this unconscionable illegal dubious sales.”
“A single directive; this is not the time to be pretending to be solving the problem by asking for labour to go and meet the Minister for Employment. The President should show leadership, he should show decisiveness.”
Mr Ablakwa continued,“This is the president who told us that none of his appointees should be allowed to use public office, the appointment that he will give them to do business, to do transactions, that will make them millionaires and billionaires, using public office and that if people want to make money, as for him his government is not for making money, they should stay in the private sector. Is that not what President Akufo-Addo told us?” he quizzed.
He emphasised that when the president came into office, he assured the public that state assets would be well managed or expanded for future generations.
“We all applauded the president, now he is faced with a test, this is the time we are expecting him to show that what he told us, was not just one of those usual rhetoric as we have come to discover, so the president should issue a firm directive”he insisted.
The former Deputy Education Minister who has a petition with the Commission and Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to probe the transaction, said those leading the process are the president’s appointees and therefore he has the power to stop them.
“Those who are selling our SSNIT, the ones buying from his Cabinet, are all his appointees.
He said the discussions between organised labour and the Ministry of Labour and Employment Relations are needless.
That is what we expect from the president, not this rigmarole and wanting to waste our time, waste scarce resources to be holding meetings; and only God knows what will emerge from those meetings. This is unnecessary,” Mr Ablakwa concluded.
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