Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah, a former senior governance advisor of the United Nations (UN), is urging President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to take from the playbook of the Ukrainian leader to give a glimmer of hope to Ghanaians who are going through enormous economic suffering.
His expectation was that the President would use the state-of-the-nation to tell the people how things were going to get better, but this was missed out.
“Look at what is going on in Ukraine, it might be the best example, you see that Zelensky, this young man, is giving some kind of leadership to a country, which is completely destroyed, yet he keeps telling the nation that we are going to win the war.
We have heard from the Finance Minister as well as the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, we all know what they have told us are all short-term measures and therefore the expectation is to hear something that is a little bit of a longer term.”
Prof Agyeman-Duah has been calling for downsizing of the government and a cut down of its ostentatious spending to save the troubled economy.
He does not see the decision to reduce the salaries of government appointees – ministers and their deputies, regional ministers, metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) and the chief executive officers of state-owned enterprises by 30 percent for nine months as going far enough.
To Prof Agyeman-Duah, this salary cuts are cosmetic, insignificant and do not really mean much. He wants the fat pegs that public officials have been taking, including clothing and garden boy allowances, travel expenses, fuel allowances and the use of state vehicles all chopped off.
It should be about downsizing the over-bloated government by cutting the fat off the government - cutting out the needless and frivolous travels that public officials do and then look at the extensive privileges that we give to public officials.
Content created and supplied by: KyeretwienanaOseiBonsu (via Opera News )
COMMENTS