General News of Sunday, 20 May 2012Source: citifmonline.com The Commissioner for the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Lauretta Vivian Lamptey has expressed surprise over claims by the Centre for National Affairs (CNA) that it influenced her resignation as a member of the board of the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB).

The CNA demanded her resignation citing portions of the CHRAJ Act which said that the Commissioner or the deputy commissioner should not hold any other public office.

The Centre indicated that madam Lamptey’s decision to sit as a member of the Ghana Commercial Bank board and still stay on as the CHRAJ boss creates a conflict of interest situation.

Madam Lamptey has since resigned as GCB board member, but insists her decision was made months before the group made the call.

In an interview with Citi News, the CHRAJ boss indicated that “there was no pressure at all and by the way I’ve spoken to them [Centre for National Affairs] once, ever, I’ve never met them, they call me and I answered their questions so when I read a report saying that after weeks of behind the scenes negotiations with their lawyers – I’m honestly just ticked.

“I’ve never met them, there’s nothing to negotiate because I told them, if you’re really concerned in terms of the overall happenings, this is a non issue, I have made a decision months ago to leave the board and it’s just a set of circumstances that my last date on December 21st where I indicated to the board that I would be leaving at the end of April.”**