The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected suggestions that repeated signatures in payment registers for Ghanaians evacuated from South Africa necessarily indicate fraudulent transactions.
The Ministry’s Media Relations Officer, Fred Duhoe, says some of the signatures being questioned belong to parents who received financial assistance on behalf of their children.
He argued that investigators must consider the circumstances under which payments were made before drawing conclusions about the authenticity of the records.
His explanation follows concerns raised by the Minority in Parliament and subsequent media investigations into payment registers associated with the GH¢49.72 million evacuation exercise.
The investigations have questioned repeated signatures, duplicated entries and the authenticity of some acknowledgements of payment.
However, Mr Duhoe maintained that the presence of identical signatures against different beneficiaries could be explained by parents or guardians signing for minors.
“A mother comes in with four children. A mother comes in with two kids. A mother comes in with a minor. A father comes in with his son or daughter who are under certain ages of 12,” he explained.
He questioned whether children of such ages could reasonably be expected to sign individually for money received on their behalf.
According to him, payment records could therefore contain the same signature and contact information against several names belonging to members of one family.
Mr Duhoe also challenged the conclusions reached by an independent media organisation which reviewed the documents obtained by the Minority.
He claimed that while the Minority initially identified 824 beneficiaries whose payments could be matched, the media organisation’s analysis identified approximately 1,300.
He further asserted that subsequent scrutiny by JoyNews suggested that more than 1,800 beneficiaries could be accounted for.
The Ministry’s spokesperson questioned why investigators continued to challenge the records without first obtaining explanations from the officials responsible for preparing them.
He particularly criticised attempts to determine whether signatures were genuine merely by examining their appearance on documents.
“You wonder what kind of thinking went into concluding on the basis that an ink was applied on the face of a sheet of paper and it’s not a genuine signature,” he stated.
Mr Duhoe maintained that differences in the findings of the Minority and media investigators demonstrated the need for a careful interpretation of the records.
His comments come as the Minority intensifies demands for an independent audit, citing allegations of payments recorded without signatures, missing receipts and beneficiaries who reportedly received less than the amounts entered against their names.
The Ministry insists that the available documentation supports the evacuation exercise, while the Minority maintains that the records require independent scrutiny.
