President Akufo-Addo has accepted the resignation from office of Carlos Ahenkorah, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, with immediate effect today, Friday 3 July.
The move follows Ahenkorah’s admission that he had breached the COVID-19 safety protocols.
Ahenkorah, who had tested positive for the virus, visited a voter registration centre in his constituency before he completed the period of self-isolation.
He had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital with COVID-19 complications. He issued a statement yesterday saying he was only at the isolation centre for overnight observation but was never admitted to the ICU.
President Akufo-Addo admonished all of his appointees to bear in mind the need to provide leadership, at all times, in adhering to the internationally recognised measures to help the nation defeat COVID-19.
Accepting his resignation, President Akufo-Addo acknowledged that Ahenkorah had acted honourably by resigning, in the circumstances, and wished him well.
Prosecution
Earlier, the pressure group OccupyGhana had called for the head of Ahenkorah, who is also the MP for Tema West .
The group expressed its disappointed with the deputy minister’s actions. He admitted that after testing positive for COVID-19, and before he registered a negative test result, he recklessly and callously put himself in the public space, visiting voter registration centres in Tema West.
“By this, he put his fellow citizens at such a high risk of contracting the coronavirus disease,” said an OccupyGhana press statement issued on Friday.
“As a minister of state of a government that is battling hard against this pandemic, he has shown a remarkable lack of good sense on the social and physical distancing that is required by law, on the pain of criminal prosecution.
“His actions show gross disrespect to the pronouncements of the president concerning keeping the populace safe, and his behaviour makes a mockery of any enactments government has made in the fight against the coronavirus.”
