National Service Scheme Recruitment, The National Service Scheme (NSS), has defended its decision to pay some GH¢100,000 cedis to recruitment agency, Zormelo and Associates to recruit its new staff.
According to the scheme, its action still lies within its mandate.
A group of temporary staff, calling themselves Supporting Staff of the NSS, at a press conference on Tuesday called on the incoming government to review the last minute recruitment, being undertaken by the NSS.
The group accused the NSS Executive Director, Dr. Michael Kpessah Whyte, of filling the positions with only loyalists of the outgoing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and forcefully removing the Human Resource Officer of the NSS from her post.
But according to the Head of Public Relations of the NSS, Ambrose Entsiwa Jnr., the allegations being thrown at the Executive Director are unfounded.
“We floated adverts in the various newspapers that all those eligible Ghanaians interested should apply through a particular online address and this was outsourced to a private company and therefore all those applications went to the company for them to carry out the processes. The opportunity was open to everyone,” he said.
Mr Entsiwa Jnr further debunked the assertion that the HR Officer had been sacked due to the interest of the acting Executive Director of the scheme to recruit party loyalists.
He said the HR Director, had been granted a request to take her annual leave around the time of the recruitment.
The National Service Secretariat (NSS) has recently come under heavy criticism after it recently recruited new staff and announced a 60% increment in monthly allowance for service personnel.
Critics say the recent actions are deliberate attempts by the managers of the National Service Scheme, and are politically motivated to frustrate the plans of the incoming New Patriotic Party government which takes office on January 7, 2017.
But according to the scheme, its recent actions were done in accordance with due process. They have thus denied that the increment in allowance for national service personnel was a hasty political decision.