Wednesday, July 16, 2014
My
good friends, President Mahama has moved on to reshuffle his team, bringing in
new faces, shifting some appointees around, disbanding the Ministry of
Information (to gladden my heart!), and retaining some appointees at post.
The
“old faces” have either been moved to new portfolios or retained to suggest the
amount of confidence that President Mahama has reposed in them, even if there
is much to prove that their performance isn’t above reproach. The Minister of
Education and her Deputies (Samuel Okudjeto-Ablakwa and Alex Kyeremeh), for
instance, have been kept at post, although the Ministry faces much turbulence
in many areas—lack of resources for the schools, industrial actions by teachers
and lecturers at the polytechnics and universities demanding better service
conditions, and many more. Will they gear up to prove their critics wrong now
that they have been given the nod to remain at post?
Seth
Terkper (Minister of Finance) is still at post, thanks to President Mahama’s
insistence on keeping him there no matter how much pressure is put on him by his
critics. And he has been in Parliament, pleading for well over 3 billion Cedis
more in a supplementary budget to enable the government accomplish its goals.
The Ministry of Finance has a lot to do and Terkper will have to redouble
efforts if he can. Otherwise, the situation will worsen.
Others
who have been shifted around are expected to outdo their predecessors. Knowing
them for what they did or failed to do at their previous posts, what guarantee
is there that they will perform much better in their new calling to help the
government solve problems? Being re-assigned suggests that President Mahama
trusts them to deliver the goods to prove critics wrong that this re-aligning
exercise is not just a mere game of musical chairs.
Those
kicked out (e.g., Kwesi Ahwoi, formerly of the Ministry of the Interior) may
have good reason to complain but should look for other opportunities to serve
the country.
The
list did not contain the names of the Deputy Regional Ministers. Why?
One
major problem that I have with the President’s re-alignment of his team is the
retention of the large portfolios/Ministries. It is unacceptable for Ghana to
have 33 Ministries (out of which 10 are for the Regions) in addition to the
hollow shell of “Minister of State”. So appalling is it too to have 34 (or
more) Deputy Ministers. This is extremely large a government team to be
supported by the tax-payer!!
I
daresay that the Ministries and Deputy Ministries are too many and the
President should have cut them down by collapsing some into others and
disbanding many outright. In my own assessment of issues, Ghana doesn’t
need more than the Ministries that I have determined below:
1.
Foreign
Affairs & Regional Integration
2.
Attorney
General & Ministry of Justice (to be split into two separate institutions)
3.
Defence
4.
Finance
5.
Interior
(to be responsible also for Local Gov’t & Rural Development, Chieftaincy,
etc.)
6.
Agriculture
(to be responsible also for Fisheries & Aquaculture)
7.
Transport
(to be responsible also for Roads & Highway)
8.
Education
(to be responsible also for Youth & Sports, Gender, etc.)
9.
Health
and Human Services (to be responsible also for Children & Social Protection)
10. Environment, Science, Technology
(to be responsible also for Lands & Natural Resources, Energy &
Petroleum)
11. Works & Housing
12. Commerce (to be responsible also
for Trade & Industry)
You can see that many of the existing
Ministries that I have excluded from my list are not really needed and can at best
be designated as Departments or Agencies under substantive Ministries to be
managed as such.
Where some of the Ministries that
I have designated appear to be too large (e.g., the Ministry of the Interior,
which will have additional responsibilities for Local Gov’t and Rural
Development, Chieftaincy, etc. or the Ministry of Science, to be given additional
responsibilities for Lands and Water/Natural Resources, Energy and Petroleum),
Deputy Ministers can be appointed to head the divisions instead of one Minister
being responsible for the whole lot. In that sense, appointing Deputy Ministers
will be apt.
As for the Ministry of
Communications (and the one now collapsed into it—Ministry of Information and
Media Relations), it is irrelevant and should have been done away with. The
government can find better ways to control that sector without necessarily raising
it to the status of a Ministry.
Others that I have ruled out are
mere wine bottles being filled with appointees whose impact has not and will not
be felt. Take them one by one: Roads
& Highway, Gender, Children and Social Protection, Fisheries
and Aquaculture, Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, Tourism,
Culture and Creative Arts, Water Resources, Transport, and
Employment and Labour Relations. Too much duplication and waste of
resources on them. All those many Deputy Ministers and the 5 Ministers of State
are not really needed.
Ghana’s democracy should be
improved as local government structures are established and strengthened. To that
effect, all Regional Ministers, Chief Executive Officers for the Metropolitan,
Municipal, and District Assemblies should be elected by the citizens in the
various areas and serve as such. No need to concentrate everything in the hands
of the President. Then, opportunities should be created for the citizens in
major towns and cities to elect their own Mayors.
The Ministry of Education should
ensure that the management of schools is localized. The people should also be
directly involved in the management of affairs (especially through the
establishment of School Boards, etc.).
The Police Service (and the other
security-oriented services like the Fire Service, Prisons Service, and the Immigration
Service, etc.,) should be decentralized for us to have local, regional, and
national set-ups. These local institutions will be responsible for specific
areas, even though they are to collaborate with other set-ups throughout the
country if need be.
The courts must also be
decentralized for the administration of justice to be expedited and felt.
The citizens should feel the
impact of all these changes so that they can contribute their quota toward
improving local government administration!!!
I
hope these appointees will realize that they are in office to solve problems
and not lock horns while being supported by the tax payer whose living
conditions continue to deteriorate.
I shall return…
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