The National Service Secretariat has withheld the allowances of 8,000 National Service personnel for September 2017 on suspicion of impersonation and disqualification.
A statement signed by the acting Executive Director of the National Service Secretariat, Mr Mustapha Ussif, (issued in Accra yesterday) said the allowances of 58,000 personnel had, however, been paid for the month of September 2017.
The statement also said individual ezwich accounts of personnel had been credited and asked service personnel to go to their designated e-zwich service points to load their cards to access their allowances.
Delay
It explained further that payment of the allowances was delayed as a result of the process of authentication and validation of all national service personnel.
“The exercise was necessary as it has exposed a number of irregularities,” it added.
According to the statement, in the Ashanti Region, for instance, 22 people were arrested and put under investigation, nine of whom were currently facing court charges.
In Tamale, 57 people were arrested and were currently under police investigation.
Validation
The statement said in line with an earlier statement issued by the acting Executive Director, all who had not been biometrically registered were not captured for payment in September, 2017.
“All such national service personnel are, therefore, advised to visit the designated centres in Accra, Kumasi, or Tamale without further delay, to complete their biometric registration for their names to be validated for the payment of allowances due them,” the statement said.
It further stated that the management of the NSS assured all national service personnel that auditing of payment vouchers for October 2017 personnel allowances had been concluded, and that payment would be done immediately the biometric validation was also concluded.
The management also appealed to the public to assist the scheme by providing information to the security agencies on people who were impersonating national service personnel.
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