A group calling itself the ‘Concerned Workers of Railways’ has called for a forensic audit to be conducted into the finances of the Ghana Railways Company.

They claimed that several thousand Ghana cedis had been stolen by some workers of the company, and mentioned specifically the Tema project and the general finances as the key areas that had been tampered with and as such, called for an urgent probe.

The group, numbering 35 and drawn from Takoradi, Kumasi and Accra, were speaking to journalists in Accra on Saturday in reaction to a front page publication by the Ghanaian Times, about the resignation of a member of the committee inaugurated to investigate allegations leveled against the Managing Director, Rufus Okai Quaye.

They said the member, who is the Paramount Chief of Nsein in the Western Region, Owulae Agyeifi Kwame II and a member of the Railways Board of Directors, resigned from the committee because he was unhappy about what was going on.

According to the group, since the inauguration of the committee its members had not been able to meet.

The first time they tried to do so, they hooted and chased out Owulae Agyeifi Kwame with cutlasses and other dangerous weapons. The move was to prevent him from revealing the truth, they added.

“We know that those who claim to be fighting for the good of the workers have taken large sums of money from the Chief Cashier in Takoradi, running over four hundred thousand Ghana cedis and we suspect that it is because of this, that they are preventing the Managing Director from coming to work so as not to expose them”, they claimed.

The group also said that the Interim Management Committee had no accreditation from the Trades Union Congress, and that during the strike there was a direction from the Castle that they should resume work unconditionally and, for that matter, not sign any Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Therefore, they marveled at why the Minister of Harbours and Railways, Prof. Christopher Ameyaw-Ekumfi withdrew the case from court and allowed the people to sign the MoU when they had no accreditation.

“Our investigations at Takoraded that in January this year, it was detected that there was a shortfall of GH ¢455,000 at the cash office of the company, and this makes people suspect that the leadership has something to hide and that is why they are preventing the Managing Director from going to work.”

When the Chief Cashier was questioned about the situation, he told management that the money was used for payment of vouchers, but this was not taken kindly by management, the group stated.

The Chief Cashier, G. Myers was said to have been asked to hand over on January 25, this year, and account for the monies that he received at the cash office. If he failed to account for the shortfall, he would have been handed over to the police for the law to take its course.

Mr. Myers was alleged to have pleaded with management to extend the handing over until the end of February, and whilst that was to be done, he supposedly organised his cohorts to mastermind the strike action to throw dust into the eyes of the public by accusing the management of various allegations.

Source: Daily Guide