The acting Executive Director of the National Service Scheme has defended the dismissal national service staff recruited in the dying embers of the NDC administration on grounds that due process was not followed in the recruitment process.

Ussif Mustapha reveals that the recruitment of all the 205 workers sacked on Wednesday was done against the advice of eminent members of the National Service Scheme (NSS).

“The NSS wrote to the Public Services Commission for approval to recruit, the approval was granted and [Michael Kpessah Whyte] started the process by outsourcing it. The most senior persons at the secretariat petitioned the Public Services Commission against outsourcing the recruitment to a private entity but the director went ahead and carried out the recruitment process to a private entity without the Public Services Commission sitting on the board,” he told Accra-based Citi FM.

He said the Public Service Commission should have scrutinised the recruitment process, but that was not done.

The Service on Wednesday annulled the recruitment of new workers engaged in December 2016. 

The annulment, according to the NSS management, was done on the advice of the newly approved Education Minister, Mathew Opoku Prempeh.

However, the acting Executive Director of NSS said all persons affected by the decision can reapply and be interviewed by a properly constituted panel that includes Human Resources Department and Public Services Commission representatives.

Meanwhile, the former Director of NSS Dr Michael Kpessah Whyte is urging the affected persons to seek redress in court.

According to him, no illegality was perpetuated during the recruitment process.

“The documents are there [to show],” he reiterates.