Director of Corporate Affairs at the National Service Secretariat (NSS), Ambrose Entsiwah Junior, has disclosed that service personnel will receive November and December allowances by the close of day tomorrow, Wednesday, March 13.
Entsiwah said that barring any unforeseen circumstances, service personnel should receive payment for the first two months out of the four months owed them.
Speaking on Ghana Tonight, on Tuesday, March 12, Ambrose Entsiwah Junior noted, amongst other things, that “the road is now clear for us to pay them.”
“We’ve been able to work through the system to get their allowances for November and December sorted out. In fact, today [March 12], we forwarded the allowances for November and December to GhIPSS [Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems] to be able to pay them through their E-Zwich platforms,” Entsiwah said, adding, “So God willing, by the close of [day] tomorrow [March 13], their allowances will hit their E-Zwich cards.”
He explained that the Secretariat could not initiate payment earlier because of challenges from the personnel E-Zwich cards and issues of impersonations. Personnel are made to go through evaluation processes before being enrolled in the NSS system.
He stated that, as a routine, the Secretariat uses the first two months to clear any issues and know the actual number of genuine personnel it will deal with throughout the year.
“Usually for the first two months, we do what is called validation and then approvals. National service personnel are non-permanent staff and we do not pay them salaries but allowances so we go through a process to validate them,” Entsiwah Junior stated.
“As and when we release the postings, service personnel do not report at the same time so you’d also have some of them within the first two months getting their change of postings and then having to get some time to settle down. So for those two months, it will not be appropriate or feasible for us to pay their allowances,” Entsiwah Junior told Alfred Ocansey.
He stressed that if such issues are not addressed holistically, the Secretariat will be “paying a fraction of them,” emphasising that such a move will be unfair to other service personnel.
He also assured the personnel that going forward there would be no undue delays in the release of their allowances, as all issues have been resolved.
Ambrose Entsiwah Junior, however, noted that the delay is regrettable, and the Secretariat has earlier apologised to the personnel.
