Kufuor instituted the allowance for First & Second Wives; Mills and Mahama increased benefits – Oppong-Nkrumah

Kufuor instituted the allowance for First & Second Wives; Mills and Mahama increased benefits – Oppong-Nkrumah

Allowance for First & Second Wives: Information Minister and a Member of Parliament for Ofoase Ayirebi Hon. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah has clarified the public misunderstanding regarding the formalization of the presidential spousal allowance into proper salary regime.

In his engagement with Daily Graphic, he stated that the payment of allowance to the wives of the country’s former and current president and vice-presidents is not anything new as this was instituted by erstwhile president John Agyekum Kufuor’s government.

“President Kufuor, in his wisdom, instituted this because of the bad situations of some spouses of some former heads of states then. President Mills and Mahama even increased the rates of these benefits during their time” he stressed.

This issue of salary for presidential wives has gained national attention and it’s been trending across social media platforms with some claiming that the President wants to put his wife and the vice-president’s wife on payroll despite the hardship situation Ghanaians found themselves now in the country.

But Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah has refuted this claim and emphasized that “the President does not approve salaries and benefits for the Executive. Under Article 71, the First Lady and Second Lady are not office-holders, so no one can determine their benefits under that article.”

“However, a committee [on emoluments] only recommended that an arrangement for the spouses be made formal and that received approval from Parliament,” he indicated.

Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah further disclosed that “the truth of the matter is that, all surviving spouses of Heads of State, current and former, have always received salaries. Lordina Mahama, Naadu Mills, Matilda Amissah-Arthur, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, Faustina Acheampong, Fulera Liman etc have all been receiving salaries since President Kufuor’s time. What has happened now is that the arrangement has been made formal, but that was done legally based on the recommendation by the Emoluments Committee [in 2019].”

Meanwhile former President John Mhama has opposed this new development saying that “the government’s attempt to sneak the First Second wives into the Article 71 holders group is clearly problematic”.

ORIGINAL: Accramail.com