The Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has urged the Nana Akufo-Addo-led NPP administration to be sensitive to the voice of the people and take steps to reduce the growing burden on the public purse.
According to CDD-Ghana they are deeply dismayed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s additional 54 people to serve as ministers or deputies to the various ministries.
They consider this move and the obscene number of ministers a wrong one for several reasons.
This was contained in a statement issued by the Centre yesterday on the President’s ‘army’ to save the broken economy of Ghana.
The Centre stated that the current number of ministers and deputies would represent the largest ministerial team assembled by any president/head ofstate of Ghana since independence.
In addition, it also sets a negative record for acountry infamous for its oversised ministerial teams. “The United States, a larger andmore economically and financially complex country has approximately 46 ministers. Similarly, India, a country of some 1.3 billion has 75 ministers”, the statement said.
They also said “it is being argued that the large ministerial team will bring more focus, supervision, and efficiency to President Akufo-Addo’s ambitious governance and socio-economic plans. In the Centre’s view, however, this argument is weak, as there is no proven relationship between a large government and a well-governed, prosperous society”.
“In addition, there is no correlation or causation between the large retinue of political heads and political/socio-economic transformation. What is clear and certain is that, a smaller government is a cost saving measure that signals a high level of discipline and focus of a government that wants to protect thepublic purse”.
Again, CDD-Ghana believes the appointments betray inadequate sensitivity to the weak fiscal condition ofthe country today, as it flies in the face of the President’s promise to protect the publicpurse.
“It is difficult to see how appointing such a large number of ministers, who will all be on ministerial salaries and benefits, can possibly amount to the promise of protecting the public purse. Indeed, a reduction in the cost of running government, including appointing the minimum number of ministers required by the Constitution, particularly those drawn from Parliament, was one of the list of 10 actions CDD-Ghana urged the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government to undertake in its first year,” they noted.
They also the move by the President further undermines Ghana’s already weak state bureaucracy since placing a team of politician ministers on top of the existing hierarchy of the ministries will lead to unnecessary duplication of senior personnel and eventually undermine the authority of the professional senior civil and public servants (particularly, chief directors and directors) in the same ministries.
Furthermore, the Centre fervently prays that the NPP government does not attach an army of technical advisers to the already bloated personnel at the ministries, departments, and agencies of the state.
“In the medium term, the Centre would like to see a law passed that puts a ceiling on the maximum number of ministers and deputies the President can appoint at a time, and or make it mandatory for the President to explicitly provide the rationale for appointing more than one deputy minister per ministry”.
“The Centre wishes President Nana Akufo-Addo had taken a lesson from the examples of Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and John Magafuli of Tanzania, who significantly downsized the size of their governments to signify“change” upon assumption of office – instead of lowering the bar of unwisely ministerial size and government in Ghana’s 4th Republic,” the statement said.
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