Information reaching me indicate that the storyline as told here may not be all that factual.
The Ambassador in question knows nothing about some of the arrangements the consulate in Lebanon had with some of those girls.
Gov't duly arranged for free evacuation of the GHANAIAN girls who wanted to fly back home. They were split into batches. First and second batches took off smoothly. The third batch was the one creating the problem and the Ambassador to Egypt and The Sudan flew to Lebanon to see to the comfort of the evacuees.
The Usd500 issue cropped up because some of the ladies wanted to come home without waiting for the free Gov't chartered flight. In the process the consulate asked them to pay that amount and join the flight coming down. So that wasn't the flight by the Ghana government.
When the ambassador told the lady in the audio that she should come to the consulate with her passport and now they're not going to pay any ticket fee, he was booking them for the free flight being arranged. But those ladies who felt they had money to pay for the commercial flight with assistance from the Lebanese community in Lebanon who mostly had families in Ghana, paid.
The Honourable Ambassador HE Hammond was giving his best to alleviate the suffering of those sisters. Money never changed hands and entered his pockets because the flight that brought the lady the journalist interviewed was a commercial flight and not the free shuttle being organised by the government.
