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The youth and women’s wings of the Sekyere Kumawu branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region are up in arms against their District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Samuel Addae Agyekum, for what they call ‘shady’ recruitment deals in the constituency.

According to the youth, the DCE, instead of engaging the services of loyal NPP members in the School Feeding and Zoomlion programmes, has rather retained and recruited known members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the constituency.
 
The Sekyere Electoral Area Coordinator of the NPP, Mr Nketiah Frimpong, who is the spokesperson for the group, at a press conference at Kumawu, wondered why NPP members, who bought contract forms and qualified during the interview, were not engaged but the contracts were awarded to NDC members instead.

He explained that: “We wonder why all the 33 school feeding contracts have been awarded to people outside the party although we fought for the party to come to power,” adding that: “The DCE must come out with the list of all beneficiaries for the dust to settle on which people he gave the contracts to, else we will rise and demonstrate against him”.

YEA

On the issue of the recruitment of people into the Youth Employment Authority (YEA), the spokesperson said instead of the recruitment of some loyal members of the NPP, the DCE had rather engaged the services of known members of the NDC.

Mr Frimpong said they were using the press conference, first of all to bring to the attention of the party executives in the region, as well as national, and if nothing was done about the issue, then they would move to the next level.

Appeal

The youth announced that since the district office of the YEA was about to appoint a district director, the party should not make a mistake again but rather give the constituency executive a hearing when it comes to the appointment of the new YEA director.

DCE

When contacted, the DCE, described all the allegations against him as false and calculated at tarnishing his image.

He said the appointment of people into the various jobs in the district was not based on the person’s political or ethnic affiliation but rather people who qualified or met the required criteria for selection as the selection was done by professionals.

The DCE wondered why they should allow themselves to be deceived by people who lacked information to do such a thing instead of coming to his office to ask all the necessary questions for clarification.

Mr Agyekum urged the youth not to indulge in such divisive attitudes but rather channel their energies into how to strengthen the party so they could work very hard to bring the needed development promised by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

He cited, for instance, that one of their own, the Sekyere Kumawu Constituency Youth Organiser of the party, Mr Benjamin A. Mensah, was last week appointed as the new district director of the YEA but the youth were unaware because they had not asked, but rather resorted to holding a press conference.