The immediate past Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, Dr. Michael Kpessah Whyte, is urging persons affected by the scheme’s decision to cancel their appointment to go to court.
The Scheme, under the leadership of Ussif Mustapha , on Wednesday, 8th February,terminated the appointment of 205 persons, who were employed by the secretariat towards the end of the erstwhile National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) government in December 2016.
But speaking on Accra-based Citi FM on Wednesday, the former NSS boss, Dr. Kpessah Whyte, challenged the new Executive director’s decision saying he did not abreast himself with the documents that guided the recruitment of the staff.
“As far as I am concerned, during our time, we followed due process to the letter and the documents are there and the new executive director and his team need to ask for them. They should go into correspondences and they should ask for all the correspondence, otherwise, I will advise the new recruits, who have been asked to stay home that if the decision is not reversed, they should take it to court, because the truth is on their side,” Dr Kpessah Whyte said.
He noted that, the petition against the recruitment process on which the new executive director premised the decision, was from an individual staff of the scheme, and was not appropriately addressed to the Chairman of the Public Services Commission who had the right to give instructions on what must be done.
“The Public Services Commission does not recruit for state agencies. Public Services Commission at the senior level may interview or em-panel people to interview. What we were doing was, we were recruiting people at the junior level and it was based on clearance given from the Commission itself.”
“If anybody had raised an issue during the process of the interview or recruitment process, one would have expected that a professional Public Services Commission will first of all look into the issue and see if it has any merit. You don’t move on the basis of a mere letter from one staff and say stop the entire process. The petition that was written was to a particular staff at the Public Services Commission instead of the chairman of the Public Services Commission,” Kpessah Whyte said.
We didn’t err in terminating the appointments
Meanwhile, the acting NSS Executive Director who was recently appointed by President Akufo-Addo, has said that his actions are justified and was ready to challenge anyone who thought otherwise.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, he said the former director blatantly ignored a directive from the Public Services Commission to halt the recruitment process over some challenges that had been raised about the way the process was being undertaken.