Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has insisted that every Ghanaian evacuated from South Africa received the government’s reintegration package. He made the statement during a meeting with the Ghanaian community in Canada.
He was responding to a media report in which at least three evacuees claimed that their envelopes held GH¢2,000 rather than GH¢5,000. Hon. Ablakwa argues that the ministry has received no complaints in more than four months and that the claims do not match how the payments were made.
“Everybody on that list of 1,960, including minors, received the full package.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
Hon. Ablakwa explained that each evacuee on the list received a reintegration package of GH¢5,000 and a transportation allowance of GH¢500, a total of GH¢5,500. The ministry told evacuees about the payment before they left South Africa, he disclosed, and they were looking forward to it.
He described the scheme as a first for Ghana. “This is the first time that Ghanaians have been evacuated and received a reintegration package and transport allowance.”
Envelopes Handed Out in Public View
The minister laid out how the handover worked. Officials welcomed the evacuees at the airport with the media present, and he insisted the government did not receive them in secret. He stated that officials announced the amounts again on arrival, told each person that two envelopes awaited them, and urged them to collect, open and check the contents on the spot.
Hon Ablakwa noted that evacuees got their envelopes immediately at the airport. Nobody was sent to another office or asked to return later. Some opened and counted the money in front of cameras, he added, and bloggers captured the scenes.
The minister built his defence on the silence of the evacuees themselves. For more than four months since the evacuation began, he pointed out, “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not received a single complaint.” Nobody raised a shortfall at the airport, and nobody has done so to this day.
He found the timing hard to accept. The Ghanaians he knows, he argued, stand up for their rights at the airport. Even those who waited until they got home to open their envelopes would have complained at once if the amount fell short, he reasoned.
Yet the first complaints, in his account, surfaced only when a media organisation phoned people on the list about five months later. “These stories do not add up,” Hon Ablakwa stated.
Defence of the Ministry’s Staff
The minister conceded that he did not personally hand out the funds. He still came to the defence of his colleagues, naming the finance directorate of the Foreign Ministry, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) team and the national security team.
He described them as public servants of “impeccable integrity” and rejected the idea that any of them would seek to take advantage of vulnerable, traumatised evacuees from another country. The reports have also cost him personally. He disclosed that some people are calling him names because of the stories now circulating.
Hon Ablakwa warned that the controversy could have a wider effect. He suggested that those pushing the stories are probably trying to discourage the government from stepping in to rescue Ghanaians from harm’s way.
He ruled that out for himself. The vilification has not discouraged him, he stated, and he remains committed to the welfare of Ghanaians abroad and to protecting their dignity and rights. He gave the Ghanaian community in Canada the same assurance he gave critics at home: the ministry will keep acting when citizens abroad need help.
The Foreign Ministry has not yet published a payment list or receipts to settle the dispute, and the media outlet has not released the recordings or the names of the three evacuees. Until one side produces that evidence, the question of what the envelopes held rests on competing accounts.
