A recent investigative report by The Herald has uncovered that 12 members of the GCB Bank PLC board were given $33,000 (GH¢479,000) each as a travel allowance for a training program in another country. This news has made many people within the state-owned bank worried and upset.
The report found that the total amount of money paid to the 12 board members for their travel was a shocking US$396,000 (GH¢5,757,840). This did not even include the cost of their first-class plane tickets or the training itself, which many people at the bank think was “questionable.”
Some of the people who went on this training trip included Kofi Adomakoh, the Managing Director; Dr. Stephen Amoah, a Deputy Minister for Finance and a Member of Parliament; Emmanuel Odartey Lamptey and Socrates Afram, who are both Deputy Managing Directors; and other important people like traditional leaders and lawyers.
The report said that some of the board members went to the United States for the training, while others went to South Africa. The training was called “The Complete Board Directors Programme.”
The Herald started looking into this because they got a secret memo from inside the bank. The memo was about the payment of the US$33,000 travel allowance to one of the board members, Alhaji Alhassan Yakubu, who went to South Africa. This memo showed that there were big problems with how the state-owned bank was handling its money.
The memo, which was signed by two people in charge of HR and rewards at the bank, gave all the details about how much money Yakubu was given. It said that he was supposed to go to the training in South Africa from May 27 to June 7, 2024, and that the bank would pay for his expenses.
According to the memo, Yakubu was given US$12,000 for his hotel room at US$1,000 per night for 12 nights. He also got US$18,000 as a daily allowance at US$1,500 per day for his 12-day stay in South Africa. On top of that, he was given an extra US$3,000 at US$1,500 for two days that were just called “traveling days.”
This news has made many people question how the bank is being run and how it is spending its money. They think it is not right for board members to get such big allowances for a training program, especially when it is not clear if the training is even necessary or helpful.
The GCB Bank is owned by the government, which means that the money it spends comes from the people of Ghana. Many people are upset that the bank is wasting so much money on things like this instead of using it to help the country and its people.
This report is important because it shows that there needs to be more oversight and accountability in how state-owned companies like GCB Bank are run. The people in charge need to be more careful with how they spend money and make sure that every cedi is used in a way that helps the bank and the country.
