The Tuobodom Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday remanded a beneficiary of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Awuni Kwame Nelson, into prison custody for defrauding by false pretense.

The court presided over by His Lordship Abdul Baki, asked him to reappear on June 23, 2017, after he pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Boampong Isaac, the District Monitoring and Evaluation Officer with the YEA who represents the Regional Director of the YEA, Mr. Osei Boateng Michael, told the court Mr. Kwame Nelson and a resident of Techiman was a beneficiary of the YEA and received an appointment letter in October 2016.   

He said since October, the accused after reporting to his post the Offuman Methodist basic school has been to school 12 times but has received salaries for four months.

The accused on June 12 visited the school requesting for an assumption of duty letter to aid him to go for the new arrears being paid to beneficiaries.

The Headmaster of the Offuman Methodist School denied giving the letter as requested and so the accused picked up a copy of the said letter from a friend and then forged the signature of the Headmaster.

He then sent the letter through his friend to Mr. Abdulai Shaibu, the headmaster of Bonya D/A basic school in a nearby community asking him to stamp on it for him.

Mr. Abdulai then hinted the monitoring and evaluation officer on the actions of the accused.

The case was then reported to the police and the accused was arrested for questioning.  

Mr. Boampong further explained that the accused though admitted to the police of being guilty when arrested, he pleaded not guilty before the court.

The Agency recently stated that it has deleted the names of over 16,000 from its 63,000 beneficiaries payroll after an audit found their employment have been tainted with fraud.

Acting Chief Executive Officer of the YEA Justin Frimpong, said at a news conference that the shed human resource weight has saved the more than GHS20 million.

The deletion follows an audit of the Agency's human resource over the past four months. This became necessary after the YEA said it had detected some discrepancies on the beneficiary payroll.