Workers of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) have initiated agitations asking the President not to reappoint Professor Stephen Adei as the Board Chairman of the Authority.
This comes on the heels of similar calls made by Organized Labour in a memo dated 22nd March 2021 and addressed to the Commissioner-General and signed by George Amadu Awinbilla and Dominic Nartey.
“Organized Labour therefore wish to state that it does not want Professor Adei anymore as Board Chairman of GRA and it shall have no choice but to resist his appointment to GRA as a Board Chairman, with every legitimate means possible”, the memo stated.
According DAYBREAK sources, the Finance Minister is considering Professor Adei as Board Chairman for another term, with Mr. Ernest Akore as a board member nominated, but not as board member representing the Finance Ministry.
In that same scheme, Elsie Addo Awadzi, 2nd Deputy Governor of Bank of Ghana, will be replacing Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari, 1st Deputy Governor of Bank of Ghana.
According to the workers, should the Finance Minister insist on having his way in giving Professor Adei the nod, sit-down strikes and industrial actions from the union would be executed as a matter of protest.
In the said memo, Organized Labour vehemently rejects and opposes Professor Adei’s reappointment.
According to the memo, Organized Labour wishes to state as follows;
- Prof Adei’s era as Board Chairman did not only exhibit dictatorship, non-regard of Management and staff but also exhibited insults, Board interferences and also unilateral decisions as Chairman aside of violating tenets contrary to Good Governance practices and showing disrespect of GRA
- His tenure as Chairman has left perpetual mistrust, division and discomfort not only between Top Management, but also among most Senior Management staff leading to apathy and culture of silence in GRA.
- His era as Board Chairman saw the Board behave as ‘’Management’’, meeting on a monthly basis (sometimes bi-monthly), taking decisions hitherto reserved for Top Management and incurring unacceptable sitting allowance cost to the Allowance.
Such has not only undermined the office of the Top Management, but has also taken the ‘’powers and Mandate’’ of Management as everything must be sent to the Board for approval.
- For his involvement in procurement and other GRA businesses, Organized Labour shall reserve its comments for another full chapter.
It is interesting to note that it was these tendencies of Professor Adei as outlined above that caused his exist from GBC after continuous battles with GBC staff and Management.”
Somewhere last year, the staff officially notified the Minister of Finance of how the Board Chairman of the state revenue outfit was killing the Authority with his disrespect for corporate governance.
The workers in a bold fashion told Mr Ken Ofori-Atta that his all-knowing subordinate is running the show as if he was the Chief Executive of the GRA.
In a zoom meeting with the Minister, the GRA staff said that Prof. Adei has made the Commissioner-General of GRA irrelevant, as he (Prof. Adei) was creating confusion at GRA and it was time stoppers were put on his way.
”Prof. Adei is running GRA like his personal business and the situation is creating huge problems for the GRA,” the workers told the Minister in that zoom meeting.
The meeting was necessitated by ugly happenings within the state revenue agency, notably the action and inactions of the board chairman.
The Minister who the Union argues has a relationship with the board chairman because they both attend the same church was made aware of how Prof. Adei has no regards for the other board members.
The Minister, before that zoom meeting, had been told of how the man he was convinced would help the GRA was rather collapsing the institution.
Prof. Adei takes care of everything – from procurement to staff transfers, promotion and recruitment to the chagrin of other board members.
