Afaglo threatens to challenge SSNIT in court

Counsel for the embattled General Manager in charge of Management Information Systems (MIS) of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), ‘Dr’ Caleb Afaglo, has threatened to go to court and challenge the dismissal of his client.

According to his counsel, Mr Charles Owusu Juanah of KSAN Law Firm, they have not yet received any notification of SSNIT dispensing with the services of ‘Dr’ Afaglo and that they only heard of it on radio which, he said, was unfortunate.

He said the legal process would be initiated immediately his client was served with the letter of dismissal.

Earlier ‘Dr’ Afaglo in an interview with the Daily Graphic had refuted claims by his former employers that he did not have the necessary academic credentials which earned him his job with SSNIT in October 2015.

He said the issue of certificates was the subject matter of investigations by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) which had not been concluded, and that he would make available his certificates at the right forum after getting the green light from his lawyers.

Additionally, ‘Dr’ Afaglo categorically denied all the allegations that he had been fired from all his previous jobs before he joined SSNIT.

‘Dr’ Afaglo said “in my 15 years of work, I have never been questioned about my competence, knowledge or certificate, not even by my employers — SSNIT.  It is only when there was a change of government in January 2017 and mysteriously the new management had an issue with my certificate, but not my work ethics,” he said.

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Exercise restraint

‘Dr’ Afaglo, therefore, pleaded with the general public to exercise restraint until the matter was brought to its logical conclusion because he was a youngman with a wife, children and extended family.

Explaining further, the allegations made against him concerning his previous employments with some reputable companies, ‘Dr’ Afaglo said, he was born into the Action Chapel International Church and had been with the church since childhood.

He said he was later appointed the Director of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Department of the church and was tasked by its leadership to build a television station — Dominion TV, which he executed perfectly within two months in line with the specifications of the Archbishop of the church.

According to ‘Dr’ Afaglo, he was later appointed an adjunct lecturer at the Dominion University, the academic wing of the church, where he taught the Level 300 students Management Information Systems and the Level 100 students, Introduction to Computers.

He said during his period with the Action Chapel International and the Dominion University, there was not an occasion when an issue was raised about his certification or ability, adding, “ it is factually untrue that the National Accreditation Board (NAB) conducted an investigation on me.”

GLICO Insurance

On GLICO Insurance, ‘Dr’ Afaglo said, he had never worked with GLICO in his personal capacity, but rather his company, Easy Networks, did some work for that institution— set up its network infrastructure, firewall, servers, telephony systems— and that he had never been fired from GLICO under any circumstance.

He said he worked with MTN between 2008 and 2009 during the conversion of its 2G to 3G network. “My department was responsible for the simless roaming in West Africa, which was successful under my watch. MTN itself can attest to this that I was the only engineer to be decorated with the Performer of the Year Award (Yellow Star).”

‘Dr’ Afaglo said after MTN, he was employed at Simmnet Ghana Limited as the Chief Operating Officer at the time Simmnet was in the red.

He said after working for the company for sometime, its finances improved and it started paying dividend to its shareholders, adding that at the moment Simmnet was one of the profitable entities of SSNIT.

‘Dr’ Afaglo said before joining SSNIT from Simmnet, he had consulted for SSNIT on two occasions — the first was on the OBS Project when SSNIT encountered transmission challenges between their data centre and branch offices which it found out to be a configuration issue on their firewall due to ingress and egress configuration.

”In 2015, my second consultancy was on the purchase of the Enterprise Wide IBM E720 based on requirements submitted by the SSNIT technical team, and Perfect Business Systems (PBS) as a vendor,” he said.

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According to him, he wrote an analytical report which he submitted to the management and said, “under no circumstance was I consulted on anything in connection with the OBS,” he stressed.

‘Dr’ Afaglo said after that exercise, he was engaged by SSNIT in October 2015 as the acting General Manager of MIS, after a rigorous recruitment process.

He said some of the projects he had worked on while in that acting capacity included the rewriting of SSNIT ICT policy, rewriting of cyber security policy, redesigning of the company’s website to make it more interactive and informative, redesign of security and firewall policy, as well as institutionalising the technical support and ticketing system.

He indicated that based on his sterling performance, he was confirmed in July 2016.

Controversial issue

He explained that the controversial issue of the OBS, which he was being blamed for at the moment, started in 2011, long before he was employed in 2015.

“The project was ongoing for four clear years before I joined SSNIT. All the variations had been concluded except for change requests which were generated from various divisions. In my professional opinion, change requests can only be generated after a project is closed. The project was closed in April 2016 after change requests  were submitted to a team for validation before submission to management.”