South Africa evacuation: Minority rejects claims they coached returnees

The Minority in Parliament has denied allegations that it paid or attempted to coach some Ghanaian evacuees from South Africa to speak against the government over the handling of their repatriation and related allowances.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, October 27, the Ranking Member on Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Samuel Abdulai Jinapor, said the Minority had neither paid nor persuaded any of the evacuees to make allegations against the government.

His response follows a press conference held by some of the evacuees on Monday, October 26, during which they alleged that some opposition figures had attempted to coach them to speak against the government.

Mr Jinapor rejected the claims, insisting that the Minority had not influenced any of the evacuees to speak publicly about the matter.

“Let me place on record that at no point in time did the Minority engage, pay, and/or convince any of these people,” he said.

He explained that some of the evacuees had decided to speak out after discovering discrepancies between the allowances they were reportedly entitled to receive and the amounts they actually received.

The Minority has raised concerns about expenditure on the evacuation exercise, citing alleged duplicate entries, payment records without signatures, missing supporting receipts and claims by some evacuees that they did not receive the amounts recorded against their names.

Mr Jinapor said these concerns remained unresolved despite explanations from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.

He therefore renewed the Minority’s call for an independent audit of the evacuation exercise to establish how the funds were spent and address the questions surrounding the payment records.

The allegations about the evacuation expenditure and the claims that opposition figures attempted to coach evacuees remain disputed.