The Methodist Church of Ghana is seeking an urgent financial bailout from its members across the country to support the church’s university, the Methodist University College (MUC) in Accra. In that connection, the church has compulsorily levied all its societies to pay between GH¢2,000 and GH¢70,000 or more, depending on the size of the society, to help defray a huge debt sitting on the books of the MUC.
The university, which is said to have contracted a loan of about GH¢1 million from a bank some two years ago to undertake what was described as an expansion project, has defaulted in paying the amount, which has accumulated some huge interest.
According to some sources within the church, the superintendent ministers had been tasked to ensure that their congregations helped to settle the loan or risk being denied their salaries.
The sources said the various churches had been given up to the end of the year to ‘cough’ out the levies.
The announcement to that effect, which was given on Easter Sunday, indicated that the Dansoman Circuit alone, which is made up of about seven different societies, is expected to pay GH¢181,191 by the end of the year.
In the Dansoman Circuit, there are seven big societies and six smaller ones, described as nurseries.
Breakdown The biggest society within the circuit, the Mount Olivet Society, is expected to pay GH¢60,000 by the end of the year, while the Bread of Life Society at the Dansoman Exhibition Roundabout has been tasked to pay GH¢42,000.
The Bethel Society is to pay GH¢17,000; Maranatha, GH¢13,500; Grace, GH¢7,000, while J.C. Mensah Memorial will release GH¢7,300, with Ebenezer paying GH¢6,000, while Ebenezer Down will also pay GH¢3,000.
The nursery societies have been levied GH¢2,000 each, while the Circuit Office will also pay GH¢13,391.20.
Effect on development The levies on the churches are expected to drastically slow down the many development projects that the various societies have either embarked on or are about to start to improve infrastructure, among other things.
Presently, some of the societies which heavily rely on the benevolence of their members are in a fix on how to ensure that members pay up by the deadline to prevent a freeze on the salaries of their superintendents and stall the projects which are at different stages of completion.
Members angry Some members of the societies expressed outrage at the latest development and described the action as unfortunate and unacceptable.
According to them, the challenges they went through in getting their children admitted to the university did not encourage them to pay to revive an institution their children had no access to.
“The university does not even recognise us as members of the church whose money is used to run the institution to even give our children priority. Now that it has a problem it is coming to us to pay,” one member said.
They wondered why the university would sit down for such an issue to hit it and urged the top hierarchy of the church to sanction the leadership of the university for what they described as their “careless act” that had brought about such a financial mess in the current trying times.
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