Is the Trades Union Congress, TUC, in coma? Is TUC sleeping? Why is TUC fiddling whilst SSNIT is bleeding to death? Where from this nauseating selectivity by the leadership of TUC?
The former Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Ernest Thompson, has been acquitted and discharged by the court, thanks to the decision of Dr. Dominic Ayine, to discontinue the trial.
His trial regarding the controversial purchase of the $66 million SSNIT Operational Business Suite (OBS) suite started with 29 counts and then reduced to two counts including conspiracy and willfully causing financial loss to the state.
Mr Thompson and four others were hauled to court in 2018 for the alleged questionable roles they played in a $66 million SSNIT Operational Business Suite project that was intended to revamp operations of SSNIT.
The former Director General of SSNIT is officially walking free because the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, has decided to discontinue the case on the instructions of President John Dramani Mahama.
The offences levelled against Dr Thompson and the other accused persons included willfully causing financial loss to the state, conspiracy to commit crime, defrauding by false pretence in contravention of the public procurement act and authoring of forged documents have all come to naught because the Attorney General has decided to set them free.
Interestingly, when Bryan Acheampong made a bid to purchase SSNIT’s shares in a subsidiary company, the TUC was livid, held pressers, issued threats to the government, leading to the suspension and cessation of the discussions.
A case involving US$66 million of pension funds has been truncated on the flimsy opinion of the Attorney General and TUC is deafeningly silent about it. It only means that the TUC’s opposition to Bryan Acheampong’s bid to buy some hotels of SSNIT was more a political one than the so-called genuine concerns about the future of SSNIT and its operations.
TUC’s leadership doesn’t care if SSNIT loses millions of dollars as long as their parochial interests are not served along the line. How this revered trades union body has allowed politics to creep into its operations is beyond one’s imagination.
SSNIT, and of course, pensioners are at mercy of these transactional, partisan rogues who have populated our institutions to fill up their stomachs. SSNIT, you are not safe under Mahama.
WMN