Rent allowance: Chief Justice, 49 other judges received payments in error and refunded
Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo has wrongly been accused of receiving rent allowance despite living in her official government property
According to Judicial Service records made available to the media, Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey Torkornoo and 49 other justices of the superior and lower courts in the country received an ineligible payment for housing (rent allowance), but when the anomaly was discovered, the affected judges refunded the payments to the judiciary.
Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey Torkornoo has been accused of receiving a rent allowance despite living in her official government property. However, the fact indicates that these payments were made to her and other judges between 2020 and 2022 when Justice Anin Yeboah (Rtd) was the Chief Justice.
The records
The records also show that payments were an error on the part of the judicial service. Upon drawing the attention of the affected judges, all of them, without exception, refunded the payments to the service. The accounts also point out that all the judges refunded the tax component, and the Judicial Service had to repay the tax components to the judges.
Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo was paid GHc 152,768.40, tax inclusive. She refunded this amount in full. However, the service repaid her GHc 34,079.10, bringing the amount paid back to the Judicial Service by the Chief Justice to GHc 118,689.30.
Other payments
Other judges who also received payments were Justice Janapare A. Bartels-Kodwo, Justice of the Court of Appeal, who has been nominated to the Supreme Court by President John Dramani Mahama, pending the vetting and approval of Parliament. She received GHc 90,548.46. After refunding, GHc 21,218,08 was repaid to her, leaving the total amount refunded at GHc 69,330.38.
Justice P. Bright Mensah and Justice Senyo Dzamefe, both of whom President John Dramani Mahama has also nominated for elevation from the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court, also received these payments.
They received GHc 105,870.40 and GHc 94,975.20, respectively. Justice Bright Mensah was repaid GHc 23,899.42, and Justice Dzamefe received GHc 21,992.76 as his refund—the two refunded GHc 81,970.98 and GHc 72,982.44 back to the service.
Disingenuous attack
“Singling out Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey Torkornoo and accusing her of knowingly receiving rent allowance while living in an official residence is disingenuous, ridiculous, and an apparent attempt to discredit the Chief Justice of the Republic.
“These claims are a desperate attempt to smear the hard-earned reputation of the Chief Justice, who is probably the cleanest judge in Ghana,” a source at the judicial service familiar with these developments told Asaase News.
“If the claim that the Chief Justice genuinely received these rent allowance payments erred, then all the other 49 justices of the superior courts and judges of the lower courts also erred. Any call for the head of the Chief Justice based on this issue should mean that all the other judges who also received such payments should also be removed from office,” the source further stated.
Reporting by Wilberforce Asare in Accra
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