COFTU says Parliament committee investigating NSSF is conflicted
Lyomoki to Speaker: The Federation had earlier appealed to you with evidence, to recuse a member of this impugned Committee who has a well known and proven clear conflict of interest and longstanding historical vendetta against me personally and the leadership of COFTU, generally; and who has been vowing to retalliate against me personally due to his misconception that I was the one who moved the Fund's boarad to deny him funding for travel to the International Labour Conference in June, 2022. However, you appear to have ignore our appeal.
The Central Organization of Free Trade Unions (COFTU) has described as conflicted the Parliament Select Committee instituted to investigate the mismanagement of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and for that matter won’t honor any further invitations to appear before the said committee.
On 31st January 2023, the leadership of the Central Organization of Free Trade Unions (COFTU) appeared before the Parliament Select Committee on NSSF. To our shock, the committee had invited other persons who are not leaders of COFTU,” reads a letter Dr Sam Lyomoki, the Secretary General of COFTU wrote to the Speaker of Parliament in part.
“….after being ordained as part of the ‘COFTU delegation’, were allowed, without any restraint and call for substiantion, to present clearly libelous, slanderous, defamatory and disgraceful material and utterances against the legitimate COFTU leadership,” Lyomoki writes in the two-paged letter.
Adding: “In addition to allowing a public display of falsehood and denying the affected COFTU leadership defense against baseless allegations, the Committee abandoned the agenda of the meeting, put in our leaders under dures and devoted all the time to the fabrications, falsehood and wrangling fromt he mercenaries,”
It is on this basis that Lyomoki says COFTU will not appear before the committee again. Lyomoki believes the Committee is merely a posturing and a space for public humiliation.
“We have consulted as COFTU leadership and we have decided that while we consider other options for redress, and whereas the Committee had invited us to reappear on Friday, 3rd February, 2023, COFTU doesn’t want to be associated with such incivility and therefore won’t continue appearing before a clearly conflicted, prejudiced and biased Committee with a predetermined agenda and whose intentions are now discernable.”
