DIHOC Footwear Exposes Defence Minister

Managers of Defence Industries Holiday Company (DIHOC) has debunked claims made by the Defence Minister that the Ministry has been sidelined in the management of the footwear company.

The company rather accused the Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul of refusing to response to several letters written to him.

The acting General Manager of DIHOC Footwear, Nii Laryea, said this in reaction to some issues raised by the Minister at a recent meet-the-press series in Accra last week.

Mr. Nitiwul had said the private managers of DIHOC Footwear, also known as the Kumasi Shoe Factory, had failed to render accounts of its operations as expected.

He said the company was being run by one man who had decided to take decisions on everything, resulting in a situation where the products of the company were not patronized.

Reacting to the issues at a press conference in Accra on Monday, Nii Laryea said the minister was being misled by “faceless people behind a scheme to collapse the company”.

He said management of the company presented a dossier of their challenges to the Defence Minister after he was sworn-in, expecting him to act on the issues, but rather he refused to acknowledge their letter.

According to him, the company is unable to hold board meetings due to the Minister’s refusal to respond to their letter.

“Since we have not heard from the Hon. Minister up to date, and the then Director General of Defence Industries Department having been replaced with another officer, there has not been any official communication from the Ghana Armed Forces or the Ministry of Defence to the company, as such we are not able to even organize board meetings since we do not know who to deal with”, Nii Laryea said.

Grand Scheme

Touching on the Minister’s claim that government has given a GH¢6 million grant to a certain individual, he accused the Minister of being misled by people behind a scheme to collapse the company with the intend to have the free hand to import boots and shoes from India and China for the security agencies.

“This is a big business for them and as long as DIHOC Footwear is in operation, it is a threat to their smooth importation of boots and shoes for the security agencies,” and we the management of DIHOC Footwear know these enemies of progress to this forward march of our great country,” he stated.

“We want to put it on record that the government has not given a GH¢6 million grant to an individual on behalf of the company and the minister has not got his facts right,” Nii Laryea said.

Appeal To Minister

He called on the Minister to direct the Armed Forces to purchase all their footwear from the Kumasi Shoe Factory, as had originally been intended, instead of importing them from Asia.

Nii Laryea “Definite government policy” directing students and officers in the various security agencies to wear local shoes would go a long way to ensuring that the factory is able to operate at full capacity and employ more workers.

“We therefore want to use this platform to humbly request Dominic Nitiwul to assist the Company by directing the Ghana Armed Forces to order all their boots and shoes from the Company, and to appeal to his colleagues the Honorable Ministers of Interior, Finance, and Education to give similar directives to the other security agencies and educational institutions in the country to stop the importation of boots and shoes from China and India, and to buy from the company as a way of assisting the company,” he said.

By: Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum/ thePublisher