New foreign service recruits resume work

Page 55: Daily Graphic, April 23, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
TEN out of the 30 new foreign service recruits whose engagement as Foreign Service Officers (FSO) was suspended by the International Relations Sub-committee of the Transition Team earlier this year have resumed work.
The 20 others who allegedly did not qualify or did not apply at all but were included in the list through fraudulent means were replaced by others who qualified but were left out of the original list.
The Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister, Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, confirmed to the Daily Graphic yesterday that the suspension of the recruitment exercise was to ensure that the selection process had been fair.
He said as it turned out after the investigations, it was realised that the process was breached but the anomaly had been corrected.
He said the earlier recruitment contravened the 1992 Constitution, which frowns on discrimination, and was also in breach of the rules and regulations for appointment of persons into both the Civil Service and the Ghana Foreign Service.
Throwing more light on the issue, Alhaji Mumuni said on March 18, 2008, an interview panel set up by the Ministry for the final stage of recruitment of 30 persons to fill vacancies in the Branch A5 FSO Grade of the Ministry reported to the former sector minister the ranking of the 155 applicants based on the scores they obtained at the interview.
He said the panel recommended that the top-ranked 30 applicants should fill the advertised vacancies.
Alhaji Mumuni said the former minister on November 21, 2008, however, unilaterally and arbitrarily changed the names of the applicants to be appointed and also increased the prescribed number to be appointed from 30 to 40.
He said the former minister, on January 6, 2009, further wrote to the Head of Civil Service with another list of 12 more appointees into Branch FSO A5 Grade.
According to him, the transition team observed that by increasing the number of appointees to 40 and later sending an additional 12, the then minister ignored the budgetary constraints that persuaded the Ministry of Finance to direct that only 30 of the applicants should be recruited.
“The Minister ignored the grading of applicants submitted by the interview panel by selecting only 10 of the top ranked 30 and replacing applicants with lower-ranked ones in his list of 40 appointees,” he noted.
Alhaji Mumuni said it was also observed that eight persons in the Minister’s list of 40 appointees did not even apply for the vacancies and were neither interviewed nor ranked.
He said it was based on those findings that the team recommended to the Office of the President the review of the recruitment exercise in accordance with the principle of meritocracy and the rule of law.
That, he said, led to the suspension of the exercise.
Alhaji Mumuni said after a review of the exercise, the Ministry decided to engage the 30 top-ranked persons recommended by the interview panel to be recruited, which included the 20 persons who were left out in the first exercise.
He reiterated the government’s commitment to ensuring fair play in all its actions.