An Economist, Dr. Ebo Turkson has strongly advised against the lifting of the ban on public sector employment following the country’s exit from the International Monetary Fund program.
As part of the program, public sector recruitments were frozen in an effort to manage the public sector wage bill.
Following the country’s exit from the programme, the economist said Ghana must maintain the discipline and gains made.
“We need to stick to the discipline, the cap on public sector employment should not be removed, we replace them when others are going on retirement than employ into the public sector. We don’t need to increase the number of men and women working in the sector. In 2014, before we went to the IMF our wage bill was taking almost 53% of our domestic revenue. Over time, we have been able to reduce it to 43% which is still very high. We expect it to be 30% of domestic revenue,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kobina Otoo, Research Director of the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) wants the ban reversed.
But critics maintain that the government must address the human resource shortage in the public sector immediately, arguing that bloated public wage bill cannot be solely blamed on the workforce.
“There is still a shortage of teachers, there is still a shortage of nurses there are still shortages of cleaners for purposes of sanitation. In some of these areas, you cannot expect the private sector to employ them. So the state must be able to employ people in order to give quality public service. We have always thought the IMF ban on recruitment into the public sector was a mistake in the first place. Now that the IMF is not here, the government must do the right thing and employ people to give quality service,” he noted.
“The wage bill has been a problem for the government but is not so much about the wages and salary. The average salary in the public sector is around a 1,000 cedis. So to think that every problem government is due to the public sector wage bill is not true. There are important challenges within the way the state manages its physical policies that need to be addressed,” Dr. Kobina Otoo added.
Ghana exited IMF programme without achieving its objectives – Adongo
The Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo had insisted that Ghana left the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme without achieving its objectives.
“The IMF at a point got fed up with us. We had come to a point where we have left the IMF without achieving the objectives of the IMF programme. As a matter of fact, the IMF at a point got tired of us. The risk is that the managers of the economy do not seem to know where we are and that is a bigger problem,” Mr. Adongo said at the NDC’s public lecture on the economy on Thursday.
The Vice President, Mohamadu Bawumia confirmed that Ghana’s officially exited the IMF’s extended credit facility arrangement on Tuesday, April 2, 2019.
“…It was only on Tuesday that Ghana formally and successfully completed the IMF programme that we inherited in 2017,” he said at a town hall meeting on Wednesday.
Ghana entered a US$925.9 million three-year arrangement with the IMF in April 2015 following issues with the economy.
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By: Farida Yusif | citinewsroom.com | Ghana