Allowances for 8,000 National Service personnel suspended

Allowances for about 8,000 National Service personnel across the country have been withheld, the National Service Secretariat has announced.

It explained in a statement Saturday that the suspension of the payment of the September allowances is to allow for investigations into the affected personnel, who are either suspected of impersonation or disqualified from doing national service.

Meanwhile the September allowances for 58,000 other personnel has been paid after a month-long delay due to the process of authentication and validation, the statement signed by the acting Executive Director of the NSS, Mustapha Ussif explained.

“Service personnel are therefore required to go to designated e-zwich service points to load their cards to access their allowances,” it said.

It added, “…all national service personnel who have not biometrically registered were not captured for payment of the September, 2017 allowances.

“All such national service personnel are therefore advised to visit the designated centres in Accra, Kumasi, or Tamale without any further delay to complete their biometric registration for their names to be validated for payment of allowances due them,” it advised.

The Secretariat said the authentication and validation of all national service personnel across the country was necessary because it has exposed a number of irregularities.

In the Ashanti Region, it said 22 people were arrested and put under investigation of whom nine are currently being prosecuted.

A total of 57 people have also been arrested and are currently under police investigation in Tamale in the Northern Region.

October 2017 allowance It said auditing of payment vouchers for October 2017 allowances for personnel have been concluded, indicating, “Payment would be done immediately the biometric validation is also concluded”.

Management of the Scheme has meanwhile appealed to the general public to assist them by providing information to the security agencies on people who are impersonating for national service.