The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has said the recommendation by the Professor Yaa Ntiamoah Baidoo Committee to pay back monies to the First Lady and the Second Lady is senseless.
He explained that, “The arrangement is that we should pay them as cabinet Ministers – the equivalent of cabinet Ministers’ salary – that hasn’t happened before. I have no idea that it’s happened before. Also, the arrangement indicates that we should give them backpay from 2017; if we pay them already, why must we give them a backpay from 2017? It simply doesn’t make sense. So, it is not true that it’s something we do already.”
Speaking on Peace FM’s Kokrooko, Kwesi Pratt said that if there is already an arrangement to pay some monies to them, there is no justification to pay them any back pay.
“Just from the point of view of logic is that we do pay already but now we’re saying we should backdate it from 2017, it simply doesn’t make sense. If we already pay them, why should we then start from 2017?”
Kweku Pratt Jnr, the Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, stressed that this arrangement will be illegal, since the wives of the presidential officials are not constitutionally part of the Article 71 holders.
“More importantly, what we’re saying is that those salaries, monthly salaries equivalent to the salaries of cabinet Ministers is totally illegal. It’s unconstitutional… It is unconstitutional to treat them as Article 71 holders,” he said.
