Chief Executive Officer for Old Tafo Municipal Assembly Hon Fred Obeng Owusu has described as malicious and misleading, content of a news publication carried out against him recently that he diverted some of the lockdown relief food items meant for the vulnerable and sold them out to some market women in the area.
The government official has settled on taking a court action against the newsperson, owing to the fact that the journalist was bias in his approach since he never consulted him for his side and that charges stated in the publication are all false and highly defamatory.
News went viral yesterday 4th May 2020 on the airwaves plus other social media platforms that some residents within the municipality have leveled allegations that the MCE has sidetracked and sold some of the relief food items at cheaper prices to market women.
Writer of the story who reports for a Kumasi based radio station Silver Fm went on to indicate that, “the MCE hid 100 crates of eggs and later asked one Charles who is also a government appointee at the assembly and a close friend to the MCE to sell”.
The story went further to state that a crate of egg which was supposed to be sold at GH 20.00 was traded at the price of GH10.00 to market women at Tafo market.
“The price however created confusion between the trades in the market and the assembly after the traders realized that , the cheaper price of the eggs was spoiling their egg business”, the story says.
The journalist claimed that his source disclosed to him that bags of rice, boxes of cooking oil and boxes of sardines were diverted to the MCE’s house where he later decided to give some to the assembly members to cover him up after he was caught by them.
REBUTAL
Hon Fred Obeng Owusu (MCE) boiled with rage for close to an hour in his rebutal during an exclusive interview with leakynews.net.
He flatly denied the charges and raised his defense that all items that came from government which were 222 bags of rice, 153 bags of gari, 222 bags of white beans, 1,389 packs of tomato paste, 278 packs of cooking oil, 556 boxes of sardine and 2,926 crates of eggs were kept at the warehouse of the Old Tafo Wesley Methodist Church.
“They were under the strict custody of the presiding clergy and other religious leaders”, he stated.
He continued in his dialogue that packaging of the food items were subjected to police monitoring and that keys to the warehouse were always handed over to security officials anytime they were done with the packaging and distribution.
“Distribution was done by the local council of Churches, the deputy National chief Imam and it was their cars including that of the assembly that were used to dispense the items. Assembly members, unit committee, opinion leaders were all involved at this stage. Distribution went on smoothly”, he explained.
“Never on any occasion did I divert some of the items to my house. Allegation that I sold some of the eggs to market women is all false”, he stated.
By Enock Akonnor
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