Immediate Past National Service Authority (NSA) heads, Mustapha Ussif and Osei Asibey Antwi have refuted allegations of wrongdoing leveled against them by The Fourth Estate.
The Fourth Estate accused the National Service Authority of padding up service personnel and giving monthly allowance for rendering no service.
It alleged that the number of personnel the National Service Authority submitted for payment was more than the list the authority submitted to Parliament.
But in a joint statement by the two immediate past top directors, they vehemently denied The Fourth Estate investigative report.
In its statement, the authority explained; "It must be noted, that in addition to the general enrolment cycle by the Authority, the NSA in partnership with the Nursing and Midwifery Council runs an enrolment cycle for nurses with the same being done for teachers in partnership with the Teachers Council. The shortfalls in the figures are therefore accounted for from these other enrolment cycles. The claim by the Fourth Estate is therefore without any basis, which fact would have been apparent to them had they exercised any diligence in their purported investigations."
After explaining how the National Service posting system, they further slammed the Fourth Estate for hastily publishing what they believe is a misleading verdict without doing a thorough cross-checking from GhIPSS how much was paid after the authority's own system flagged undeserved names.
It is "shocking, that considering the standing of the Fourth Estate as a media outlet, they would rely on these entry data without ascertaining from GhiPPS (the paying entity), the actual number of personnel paid per year and whether any of these persons with such inconsistent information actually received allowances from the NSA", the statament said.
"This betrays the malicious intent of the purported investigation by the Fourth Estate, as merely calculated to hurriedly publish a sensational story to smear former officers, rather than diligently establish the facts as expected of a decent media house."
The two emphasized their commitment to transparency by highlighting the robust systems they built to curb fraud at the authority.
"Throughout our tenure, we committed to implementing robust enrolment and verification mechanisms to reduce the occurrences of unscrupulous attempts to circumvent the system. One of such important systems was the development of a common portal and the generation of unique access codes to institutions for the submission of their enrolment data in order to reduce the likelihood of manipulation at the entry point."
"The publication by the Fourth Estate must therefore be treated with the contempt it deserves as it is a manifest example of how the misapprehension of data and institutional processes may result in conclusions that misinform and mislead the general public."
While urging the media to stay true to their creed and be thorough in their work to avoid publishing "sensational stories that malign individuals without basis", it also welcomed President Mahama's call for investigations.
"We welcome the directive by President Mahama for an investigation, as we are certain the investigation will reveal that the true state of affairs on the matters published are contrary to the contrived allegations by the Fourth Estate."
