Pressure group Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) has filed an action at the Supreme Court of Ghana invoking its original jurisdiction on the Ntiamoah Baidoo Committee’s recommendations to pay salaries to presidential spouses.
Among other things, ASEPA is requesting the Supreme Court to make a declaration that the Ntiamoah Baidoo Committee did not have the capacity to make recommendations for persons outside Article 71.
ASEPA is also asking the Supreme Court to make a declaration that the current allowances paid to presidential spouses as benevolence is also unlawful.
ASEPA is praying the court for an order to restrain the government from making any payments whatsoever in the form of salaries or allowance to the first lady and wife of the vice-president until such a time when the Constitution is duly amended and provisions made for them under the law.
Already, some politicians have filed similar suits at the Supreme Court seeking to stop the payment.
Opposition MPs for South Dayi and Builsa South, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamakpor and Clement Apaak, respectively, filed a joint suit in that regard.
Also, the Bono Regional Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Kwame Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye, filed a writ at the Supreme Court along the same line.
In their view, the five-member Professor Ntiamoah-Baidu Committee which President Nana Akufo-Addo set up in June 2019 to review emoluments payable to Article 71 officeholders, exceeded its mandate by proposing that presidential spouses be paid cabinet-level salaries.
Civil society persons such as the Executive Director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), Prof H Kwasi Prempeh and University of Ghana lecturer Prof Ransford Gyampo, have also kicked against the proposed payment.
However, the People’s National Convention (PNC), the only party so far to have endorsed the recommendation, has said it finds the opposition to the proposal “repulsive” and an “attempt to derail the progress of women in the country”.
A statement signed by the PNC’s General Secretary, Janet Asana Nabla, said: “We believe in gender equality and any policy that is created to upgrade the economic status of women and to give them fairness is welcome”.
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Source: GhanaFeed.com