TODAY can state on authority that salaries of Commando instructors at Asutuare have been increased from GH¢1, 500 to GH¢2,500.
Defence Minister, Joseph Henry Smith
The latest upward adjustment, TODAY gathered, is a partial fulfillment of an agreement reached at a meeting held between the leadership of the National Security Council and representatives of the instructors last Saturday, 12th September 2009. The meeting was held at the Blue Gate (Castle Annex).
Although the adjustment failed to meet the expectations of the instructors at the Asutuare Commando base, because it felt short of the terms agreed upon by the parties that brokered the deal, insiders have hinted that the instructors accepted the “new deal on protest with the hope that every detail of the agreed terms would be implemented very soon.”
“We take consolation in the fact that we’ve been assured that we would be paid GH¢2,500 every month during our stay at the camp,” a source told TODAY.
The leadership of the National Security assured at the meeting that the new salary of the Asutuare Commandos would be worked out to come close to the GH¢10,000 being paid their colleague Commandos who are instructors in charge of the East Legon based Commandos.
The meeting was necessitated by concerns raised by the Asutuare Commando-instructors that their colleagues at East Legon were earning more than them.
The East Legon Commando instructors are paid GH¢10, 000 and still earn that, while the Asutuare instructors have now moved from GH¢1,500 to GH¢2,500.
That means the difference in their salaries as at day one of their employment is expected to be topped up in the coming month to match up with their new pay fee.
Yet the source did not discount the fact that they would still be negotiating for a further salary increment “because the adjustment does not in any way match up to that being paid our colleagues at the East Legon camp.”
The paper discovered that the East Legon instructors were employed as consultants and therefore their salaries are being pegged with that which would have been paid expatriate military instructors.
The East Legon instructors, TODAY further found out, are veteran Commandos who worked as instructors during the first administration of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), but resigned in protest against the decision by the Kufuor administration to integrate the Commandos into the regular army.
Some of them have, however, found their way back into the second NDC administration and from every indication their latest association is not necessarily based on their expertise but because of their proxy relationship with the leadership of the National Security apparatus.
But for their closeness to the National Security, the paper gathered that their weary bodies do not offer any conviction that they can go through the rigorous training that is demanded in Commando training.
As usual, National Security Co-ordinator, Brigadier General Nunoo did everything that a Ghanaian official would do by denying that he never chaired any such meeting at the Blue Gate, yet, TODAY still insist that the said meeting was addressed by the former Chief of Defence Staff and member of the defunct People’s National Defence Council (PNDC).
The meeting was attended by Mr. Korsivi Degbor and three other officials of the National Security.