Posted: Daily Guide |Friday, 19 March 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Some agents of the National Security who were dismissed by the Mills administration without any tangible reason have threatened to take the law into their hands to fight for their rights.
This was when they stormed the offices of the Commission on Human Right and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to follow up on a petition they had earlier sent to the commission for wrongful dismissal and non-payment of their gratuity.
They have therefore asked government to expedite action on the payment of their gratuity before matters get worse.
The affected staff were mostly made up of officials who were employed between 2001 and 2008.
Their dismissal is therefore seen as political victimization since they were appointed during the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration.
Their gratuity have not been paid since August 2009 when they were dismissed in a letter signed by the Acting Deputy Security Co-ordinator, K.D Dankwa.
What seemed to have provoked the anger of the ex-agents was a comment made by an official of CHRAJ, one Bede Tukuu who is handling the case.
When Mr Tukuu came out to of his office to meet the group, one of the members said, “We are suffering so you people should do something about our case.”
But this comment by the ex-security agent angered Mr. Tukuu who asked rhetorically, “You are suffering so what?”
Though some members of the group became charged, their colleagues managed to calm them down until he finally met two of the ex-security agents in his office.
Minutes after the two leaders including one Sammy, Spokesman for the group came out of the office, the rest became fired up and threatened to march straight to the National Security Secretariat, the famous ‘Blue Gate’ to meet Lt Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey over their concerns since there seemed not be any hope.
This was because Mr Tukuu told them that though he and for that matter, the Commission had written an official letter to the National Security, it had not been responded by National Security Secretariat.
They therefore noted that they were prepared to go and demonstrate at the offices of the National Security for the incumbent government to realise their plight.
Some of them, who spoke to DAILY GUIDE, revealed that under the current circumstance, they had no option but to take the law into their hands since “government has turned a deaf ear on their concerns.”
With most of them being former military personnel, they wondered how the government expected them to survive after receiving training in arms and ammunitions.
“After committing our entire lives to serve this nation, if this is the reward we will get; then we will use what we have to get what we want,” an aggrieved ex-security agent noted.
Some of the aggrieved workers claimed they still had their weapons and identity cards with them and could use to at any point in time when the need arise.
“The incumbent government must pay us our gratuity if they don’t want trouble,” they stated.
One could not but asked rhetorically “is this what President Mills promised to be the father of the nation and father for all or is this is the meaning of the ‘I care for you?”
He drives a lot of inspiration from a statement by former President Rawlings when he staged the coup in which he said, “I am prepared to die than to be a slave in my own country. I don’t know much about the law but am prepared to go to the extreme and face the bullet than to be a slave in my own country here.”
The group has therefore served notice that if the government does not addressed their concerns in the next couple of days; they would be compelled to stage a massive demonstration to demand the payment of their gratuity.
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