A 59-year-old widow and pensioner who reposed confidence in her pastor and used her salary account with Barclay Bank to take a loan for his church has rue the day she misplaced her trust.
Though Reverend Emmanuel Kwabla Adjetey repaid the GHc5,000 principal, the 44 percent 3-year compound interest of GHc2,568 which he refused to pay has now ballooned to GHc6,302.90, thus exposing Widow Victoria Yawo Gawuga to pressure from her bankers.
Rev Adjetey, pastor and founder of the Temple Pillars International Ministry at Teshie-Nungua, Accra, who used the loan “to put his church in shape” as now gone into hiding, after he sent a delegation to negotiate the terms of repayment of the accumulated interest.
Narrating her harrowing story, Madam Gawuga, disclosed that three years ago, while she was still in active service as a nurse, she had fellowship with the said pastor and trusted him.
By virtue of the fact that she was a nurse and on government payroll, she qualified for a loan from the bank through which she received her monthly salary.
She therefore obliged to the request of the pastor and took a loan of GH¢5,000 which was to be paid within three years with a compound interest of about 44%.
Pastor Adjettey, according to the old lady, agreed to the terms and was given the money but after paying the principal he failed to defray the accumulated interest of GH¢2,568.
“All efforts on my part to retrieve the remaining money failed as the pastor kept tossing me up and down, resulting in a further accumulation of the unpaid interest, now quoted at GH¢6,302.90.
“I wonder how a man who claims to be a messenger of God, can conduct himself in such a manner”, she deplored.
Madam Gawuga said that after several fruitless attempts to retrieve the money, she issued a demand notice dated 20 October, 2014 to the pastor who on receipt of the notice, sent a delegation to the widow on October 30, 2014 to negotiate the terms of settlement.
“We both agreed on when the amount was to be settled, but the date has long elapsed and the pastor has now gone into hiding”, she lamented.
Reached on phone Pastor Adjetey, but he denied knowing the widow, but he admitted in the next breadth of having sent a delegation to represent him to find out the terms of settlement of the accumulated interest.
He also admitted being indebted to Madam Gawuga, but disclosed that he settled the debt long ago and did not owe her a dime as she had claimed. Pastor Adjetey indicated that the money the widow gave to his church was never a loan.
According to him, the widow willingly gave out the money in support of the church’s project only to turn round to accuse him and his elders of swindling her, just to tarnish the image of the church.
Rev Pastor Adjetey also denied having gone into hiding over the issue, saying he had not committed any crime to warrant his disappearance from the community.
However, Alex Yawi Gawuga, younger brother of the widow who guaranteed the loan for his sister from the bank, insisted the pastor agreed to the terms of the loan before he was handed the money, but had taken undue advantage of the poor woman’s situation to allegedly defraud her.
He threatened to drag him to court in order to retrieve the last cedi of the amount owed his sister.