The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has questioned the Foreign Affairs Minister’s account of the evacuation of 964 Ghanaians from South Africa, alleging that documents released by the ministry do not sufficiently establish that all the individuals arrived in Ghana.
The party’s Director of Communications, Dennis Miracles Aboagye, said an examination of the manifests and boarding passes provided by the minister had left 761 people unaccounted for.
According to him, although the minister submitted documents to support the reported evacuation figure, the NPP believes the records do not adequately confirm that all 964 individuals travelled.
Aboagye argued that evidence of ticket purchases alone cannot establish that passengers actually boarded the flights, insisting that manifests and boarding passes are necessary to verify their travel.
“I can buy a ticket to travel to Belgium tomorrow and just an hour to the trip, I refuse to go or something comes up. I will still have the receipt for the ticket,” he said.
“The true evidence of my travel will be the manifest and or the boarding passes.”
He maintained that the documents made available by the ministry still failed to account for 761 of the people reportedly evacuated from South Africa.
Aboagye therefore called on the Foreign Affairs Minister to provide additional records demonstrating that all 964 individuals were transported to Ghana.
“That is the first thing the country is waiting on the minister to provide. He hasn’t provided it yet,” he stated.
Beyond the evacuation figures, the NPP communications director also raised concerns about payments allegedly made to individuals who were evacuated.
He claimed that the documents showed varying payment amounts, with some people recorded as receiving GH¢500, others GH¢5,000, while certain individuals appeared to have received both amounts.
Aboagye further alleged that there were inconsistencies involving names, passport numbers and payment records.
He claimed that some personal details appeared more than once, with different signatures attached to identical information.
According to him, the discrepancies require clear explanations from the ministry rather than being dismissed as simple clerical errors.
The NPP is demanding further documentation to clarify the number of people who were actually evacuated and how the related payments were processed.
The allegations, however, represent Aboagye’s interpretation of the records presented by the ministry. The specific discrepancies and the claim that 761 people remain unaccounted for require clarification from the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
