Lawyers of the victims of the Ayawaso West Wougon Shooting incident have called for the suspension of the payment of compensation to the victims to allow for further consultations.
According to the lawyers, the victims nor their counsel were consulted on the process of the compensation.
The government on Friday called for a meeting to pay the victims but the counsel said the exercise be suspended for further consultation.
The lead counsel for the victims, Mr Abraham Amaliba disclosed this during the exercise to compensate the victims in Accra on Friday.
“We didn’t know that today was going to be the day for award of compensation, the victims were told to come here for a meeting for the commencement of negotiation of the compensation, only for us to be told that, they have compensation packages,” he stated.
He said they were not against the compensation but want to draw the attention of the government to the level of damage the incident had caused some of the victims so that they could be compensated well.
“Some of the victims are virtually ‘vegetables’ and cannot actually engage in any meaningful work to feed their families. We are concerned about the computation because the level of compensation will depend on the extent of damage or injury that you have sustained, so we come here and they give everybody equal amount, what does it entails,” he added.
Mr Amaliba called for a new date to be scheduled in order to engage the National Security Council for proper deliberations into the compensation issue in order to bring closure to the matters.
“We are not against the compensation, what we are saying is that, can you suspend this, so that we take a short date, meet you as lawyers for the victims and then you take us through all the processes and get back to our clients for them to also understand, else this process is going to be like we have been ambushed and we have not been put into the loop and that is going to be problematic,” Mr Amaliba said.
However, the Chief Director of the Ministry of National Security, Lieutenant Colonel Serebour Ababio (Rtd) explained that, they had been engaging the victims for the past two months and expressed shocked that the counsel for the victims were unaware.
“I am surprise to hear you saying that you are unaware of the meeting, we should not be politicising things in the country but be concerned about the citizen’s welfare,” he stated.
Lt. Col. Ababio (Rtd) however, postponed the meeting to Thursday, October 28, 2021.
BY VIVIAN ARTHUR AND CONNIELOVE M. DZODZEGBE
