GHANA
There is too much duplication and overlapping of authority in the Ghanaian Public Service and only a major restructure will solve it, the country’s Auditor-General says.
Daniel Yaw Domelevo (pictured) singled out the Ghana Education Service, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health as examples.
“Employees at these Agencies enjoy taxpayers’ money at the expense of quality service provision when their jobs are being already done by others,” Mr Domelevo said.
“The issue is that we have too many services, too many institutions. We have the core Public Service, then we have the Judicial Service, Audit Service, Education Service, Health Service and other several services.”
He said that as if this centralisation was not enough, past Governments had created several Ministries.
“So what is the serious difference between Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education? This is just wastage,” Mr Domelevo said.
“We have created structures that duplicate roles and by the time we realise, monies meant for development at the district level, are finished. So we need to restructure the Public Service.”
The Auditor-General has in the past bemoaned what he called the decline in the quality of work undertaken by all kinds of Ghanaian professionals.
He said the standards in professions such as accounting, auditing and engineering, and vocations such as tailoring and dressmaking, had fallen to such a low extent that Ghanaians preferred the services of expatriate professional workers.
“The fundamental problem is a lack of discipline,” Mr Domelevo said.
“The quality of engineering hasn’t improved; the quality of almost everything is going down with more professions,” he said.
“Today, people who want to put up a structure don’t want a Ghanaian, they are looking for someone else.”
Accra, 19 January 2020
