The Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu has dismissed claims by the Auditor General Daniel Domelovo that some former MPs and former members of the executive who served between 2004 and 2008 are not eligible for the payment of their salary arrears.

This comes after the Forum for Former Members of Parliament wrote to the Chief of Staff Frema Osei Opare requesting payment of outstanding arrears for 139 government officials who served until 2008.

Speaking to journalists in Parliament Tuesday, the Majority Leader who is part of the group demanding the payment said "President Mills’ administration is on record to have said that the Chinery Hesse committee's report was never approved by parliament and so they were not going to pay the recommendation contained in the report, although then-President Kufuor approved the report.

"Eventually, they paid some amount about 70% or so of what was required to be paid and they said they were going to investigate and pay the remaining later. But the remaining amount never got paid which is what colleagues of that parliament [that is house between 2004 and 2008] are requesting for," he told journalists in parliament.

A team of former Parliamentarians led by the current Chief of Staff wrote to the office of the Chief of staff requesting for the payment of the arrears of their ex-gratia to be made to them.

According to them, they were paid about 70 percent of their ex-gratia by the Mills administration, leaving 30% of the amount in arrears which hasn’t been paid till now.

But the Auditor General Mr. Daniel Domelovo in response said the former government officials are not entitled to the said payment and is urging the Chief of Staff to ignore it.

Mr Kyei Mensah Bonsu, however, disagreed with the Auditor General on grounds that the payment was approved by the Kufuor administration, however, after he [president Kufuor] left office, the payments were never made.

"It didn’t have to be approved by President Mills, it had to be approved by president Kufour who did. But unfortunately, when they went to the Jubilee house to look for the document, for whatever reason, feedback was that the document did not exist at the house. The report signed by Kufuor disappeared," he said.

He added that "I was the deputy Majority Leader and I made some comments about what we did. I included it in the report that was with me which the Hon Dr. Tony Aidoo came for from me he never returned it.

"However, I think we've manged to see some of them and indeed the honourable Bagbin, the second deputy speaker has even made a report on that."

The former MPs, some of whom left Parliament over 10 years ago, are requesting the payment of arrears of salaries and emoluments amounting to over ¢29.7 million.