Playwright and poet, Chief Moomen has said he had a verbal agreement with the Ghana@60 Committee for the production of his Wogbejeke play for Ghana’s 60th anniversary celebration.
Chief Moomen had complained that he has only been paid GHc100, 000 out of the GHc200, 000 he charged the committee.
But the Chairman of the Committee, Ebenezer Amankwah said he had no formal agreement with the playwright.
“For me the most curious thing was his claim that we don’t have a contract. On what basis was Wogbejeke advertised? It was in the newspapers, radio, over 500 invited guests came to the conference centre to watch the performance and we were given half of our money before the programme. So on what basis were we engaged if there was absolutely no contract,” Chief Moomen stated.
“So far as I am concerned, we had a verbal agreement, we presented them with an invoice, and we even presented them with a receipt for our first tranche of payment. It was their responsibility to give us as well as other performers or any other service providers a contract. So far as it wasn’t forth coming, we didn’t pursue it further because our concentration was on the activity,” he added.
There’s been a sour relationship between the playwright and the Chairman of the Committee with Chief Moomen lamenting that several efforts to retrieve the rest of his money had proved futile.
But Mr. Amankwah in a statement described the amount charged by the Wogbejeke crew as ‘whooping’ and added that Chief Moomen was even “lucky” to have received half payment.
Speaking to Citi News, Chief Moomen insisted that he provided receipts and invoices covering their cost and expenses to the committee and thus will use every legitimate means to retrieve the remaining GHc100, 000.
“He [Chairman of Ghana@60 committee] sounded as if they were chasing us to come and sign a contract and we were being elusive and that is absolutely not true. We engaged with the committee several times, there was so much happening at that time, I don’t know whether because of the numerous activities and the short period they had to organize it, I’m don’t think anybody who did anything for the committee around that independence period was given a formal written contract to which they signed, I stand to be corrected.”
“I was even sympathetic for them and I said maybe it was because of the overwhelming activities that they had to engage in that is why they couldn’t do things as correctly as they were supposed to do but that shouldn’t be our question to answer, so the burden shouldn’t be on us to provide the contract, it should actually should be on them. We were being treated like they were doing us a favour and for me that’s the most frustrating things. Remember it’s been four months. When I went to see the chairman he was a bit condescending and patronizing. So far as we are concerned we did the project, our bill is 200,000 and we are still left with 100,000 and we would explore whatever legitimate ways to get the rest of our money,” Chief Moomen added.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)