Five members of staff of the Midland Savings and Loans Company who witnessed the assault of a customer of the company at one of its branches by a policeman, Frederick Amanor, have been suspended pending investigations into the matter.
Their suspension follows what the management of the company described as their “failure” to handle the situation in the manner they were trained to do.
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“Management has commenced investigations into the matter and all those involved will be dealt with in accordance with the law. We do not approve of what happened and condemn it in no uncertain terms. It is unfortunate, but our staff are trained to respond to the needs of customers in a professional manner,” the Deputy Managing Director of Midlands, Mr Isaac Mensah, told the Daily Graphic in an interview.
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While showing appreciation for the role of the police in protecting financial institutions, including the company, he said the incident involving the policeman was regrettable and unwarranted.
He rendered an unqualified apology to Ms Patience Osafo, the victim of the police brutality, on behalf of the company and said it had, since last Friday, tried to contact her personally to apologise to her but the effort was yet to yield fruits.
“We have been to her house; we have called the number she provided in our database but it is either someone picks and says she is not around or the phone is off. We want to apologise to her. We are deeply sorry for what happened,” Mr Mensah said.
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Monday 23rd JULY 2018
MIDLAND S&L APOLOGY, SUSPENSION OF STAFF & MEETING WITH VICTIM
The management of Midland Savings and Loans is totally gutted and disgusted by an act of assault meted out to our cherished customer, Madam Patience Osafo at our East Legon Branch on 19th July 2018.
For more than twenty years, Midland Savings and Loans has supported small to medium scale businesses, various pro-poor projects, traders and other business people in the formal and informal sectors with deposit and loan products, financial and business advisory services that have been convenient, timely, worthy and relevant to the needs of our customers.
At the core of our work principles and values lies a strict attention to customer satisfaction on which we do not comprise under any circumstances whatsoever.
Sadly however, our equity in quality customer service built over years of business engagements was thrown to the dogs when a police officer assigned to our organization assaulted a customer at our East Legon branch in the evening of 19thJuly 2018.
As an organization, we do not condone assault of any form and totally condemn the barbaric act. We also regret to say that we find it totally shameful that our staff on duty at the time of the incident could not restrain the police officer from inflicting any further harm on our customer.
This is very sad for us.
We are by this release unreservedly apologising to the victim, her family and the general public. No one deserves to be treated that way under any circumstance whatsoever.
We are also ready and willing to cooperate fervently with the Ghana Police Service to ensure that the officer in question, who until this unfortunate incident had been one of the very best we ever worked with is reprimanded appropriately and in accordance with the disciplinary terms of the Ghana Police Service.
As an institution that prides itself in quality customer service, our staff on duty who were witnesses to this cruel act and could not restrain the police officer or ensure the safety of our customer and the child will also be dealt with according to our internal disciplinary procedures. For this reason, all staff involved have been suspended as internal disciplinary procedures continue.
In the mean time, management have had initial discussions with representatives of Patience Osafo and the legal team are in the process of fashioning out an appropriate compensation package for our customer and same shall be communicated to her in due course.
Indeed there is no amount of recompense that can mitigate or even totally alleviate the pain and embarrassment meted out to our dear customer who only wanted her money. We are only hoping that these gestures will go a long way to express our deep remorse and promise that never again will such a barbaric act happen at any of our branches.
Thank you.
Signed
Isaac Mensah
Deputy Managing Director
