Former Directors-General of the National Service Authority (NSA), Osei Assibey Antwi and Mustapha Ussif, have responded to allegations made by the Fourth Estate in a recent media publication.
The publication accused the former NSA officers of various irregularities related to enrolment, verification, and payment processes within the Authority.
In a press release sighted by Citi News on Tuesday, February 18, the former officers expressed their concerns about the publication, describing it as “laden with a misapprehension of the enrolment, verification, and payment processes of the National Service Authority, as well as selective omission of information, calculated to achieve contrived conclusions of imputing wrongdoing to former officers.”
The publication claimed a significant discrepancy between the figures submitted to Parliament for budgetary purposes and those available to the public. The former officers clarified that the Fourth Estate relied solely on figures from the general posting done in September, omitting two cohorts of nursing trainees and one cohort of teacher trainees.
The NSA, in partnership with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Teachers Council, runs additional enrolment cycles for nurses and teachers, respectively. The former DGs argued that the shortfalls in figures were accounted for by these additional cycles.
The Fourth Estate also alleged that the NSA payroll was padded with “ghosts” due to discrepancies between the budgeted personnel and verified postings.
The former officers explained that the payroll is only activated after stringent verification processes, and only personnel who pass verification are paid through the GhiPPS System, a Bank of Ghana subsidiary.
The publication also claimed the NSA system was full of overaged individuals, foreign pictures, and wrong IDs. The former DGs in their statement countered this by explaining that initial data often contains errors, which are addressed during regional verification processes. Personnel with inconsistent information are categorized as banned or pending verification and do not draw from the payroll.
The former officers expressed shock that the Fourth Estate relied on entry data without verifying the actual number of personnel paid per year through GhiPPS. They argued that this reliance betrayed a malicious intent to publish a sensational story rather than diligently establish facts.
Throughout their tenure, Assibey and Ussif stated that they were committed to implementing robust enrolment and verification mechanisms to reduce fraudulent attempts. They urged journalists to be thorough in their work to avoid publishing misleading stories that malign individuals without basis.
The former officers welcomed President Mahama’s directive for an investigation, expressing confidence that the investigation would reveal the true state of affairs and counter the allegations made by the Fourth Estate.
READ THE FULL PRESS RELEASE- RESPONSE TO NSA INVESTIGATION BY THE FOURTH ESTATE HERE