Accountant-General's Dept Denies Media Reports (page 47)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
THE Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) has denied media reports that the department has refused to completely pay CAP 30 benefits to retirees of the Land Valuation Board (LVB) who qualify for such benefits.
Reacting to recent media reports which indicated that the department had refused to pay the retirees, in spite of directives from the Presidency, the Legal Officer of the CAGD, Mr Ali Abdul-Samad, said it was not correct that the department had refused to pay completely, explaining that the issue was about the period within which the payments should cover.
He explained that a committee set up to deliberate on the issue recommended that employees of the LVB who were appointed to pensionable post by December 31, 1971 should be paid the CAP 30 benefit up to December 1985 when the board ceased to be part of the Civil Service.
He also pointed out that the CAGD had not received any such directive from the Presidency but instead heard about it from the media.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra, Mr Abdul-Samad stressed that the payment was supposed to cover between the date of employment and 1985 when the board was formed through a merger between the then Lands Department and the Ratings Division of the Ministry of Local Government through Section 43 of PNDCL 42 on December 31, 1985.
He explained that in 1993, end-of-service benefits were paid to the affected staff to compensate them for their conversion from civil servants to public servants.
He said the law, therefore, allowed only the payment from the time of employment to December 1985, while the rest of the period which the individual continued to work was supposed to be covered by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
“This arrangement means that the retirees involved ceased to be beneficiaries of the CAP 30 after the cut-off date of December 31, 1985,” he stressed.
Mr Abdul-Samad appealed to the retirees not to feed the public with wrong information but rather come out with the truth.
He pointed out that some of the beneficiaries had complained, with the simple reason that the money they got as end-of-service benefit at the time was minimal. They, therefore, thought of getting more from the government.
“Many of them have forgotten that the amounts they collected were substantial at that time,” he said.