08 November 2013

Reduce size of Ghana Government — Professor Ayittey

 
A retired Professor of Economics at the American University in Washington, D.C., USA, Professor George Ayittey, has suggested a drastic cut in the size of government in the country.


He observed that the size of government, which had grown so rapidly, was suffocating the economy.
He said, for example, that in 1997, there were 88 ministers, regional ministers, as well as their deputies, in a country, with a population of 25 million people.
According to him, in 2004, the number reached 92, but had now shot up to 97, while the United States, with a population of 300 million, had 40 secretaries and assistant secretaries.
Prof Ayittey, who is also a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), was briefing the press on the state of the economy at an event organised by the IEA in Accra yesterday.
He cautioned that if the government failed to drastically deal with the bloated bureaucracy, the structural deficit it inherited would continue to exist and the government would have to borrow at high cost to prosecute development programmes.

Bloated bureaucracy
According to Prof Ayittey, because of the structural deficit problem, the government had no savings out of which to finance its capital expenditure.
He noted that the explosion in government’s bureaucracy was due to the tendency on the part of governments to create parallel institutions when existing ones did not work well.
Prof Ayittey, who is also an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said, for example, in the 1980s, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) was created.
He said when that did not work, another parallel institution, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), was created.
He said when President J. A. Kufuor took office in 2001, Fast Track courts were created, while deficiencies and weaknesses in the existing courts remained unfixed.

Prof Ayittey said another parallel institution was the Council of State, which was duplicating the functions of the President’s retinue of advisers, from ministers at the Presidency to presidential aides and staffers.
He noted that excessive duplication of advisory functions simply swelled the government payroll, saying the multitude of parallel institutions and bloated bureaucracy had created a huge government workforce of 700,000 workers and a wage bill that consumed 70 per cent of the budget.
He said there were some high government officials who, for the past 25 years, had not paid a single pesewa in rent or utility bills, while at the end of their service they wanted the government bungalows they occupied sold to them at a fine price. 

Perks
Prof Ayittey, therefore, suggested an action plan to cut down the 97 ministers and deputy ministers into half, as well as abolish those ministers of state at the Presidency.
He also called for a reform of the Council of State and other parallel institutions such as the  Fast Track courts, CHRAJ and EOCO, by resourcing existing institutions to work efficiently.
He also called for the abolition of the perks and privileges which were relics of the colonial past which were used to entice British citizens to serve in the colonies.
Prof Ayittey urged the government to retrieve state properties by taking back all those government bungalows that had been handed over to former government officials.

Corruption
On corruption, he said the African Union (AU) estimated that the practice alone cost $148 billion a year, which was five times the $30 billion Africa received in foreign aid from all sources.
He said Africa, and especially Ghana, had not made much progress because African governments fought corruption the wrong way, saying never should the citizens get the head of state or government involved in the fight against corruption
He noted that a typical African government approach to fighting corruption was to set up a mind-numbing anti-corruption commission and task force, amid pomp and ceremony, only to be sidelined after its inauguration.

He said back in 1993, CHRAJ was set up to investigate corruption, but when it came out with a report which fingered four ministers, the Rawlings regime issued a White Paper to exonerate them.
Prof Ayittey, therefore, called on civil society, academia and the private sector to spearhead the fight against corruption in the country.
He suggested the institution of a ‘’Report a Bribe Taker for a Reward’’ programme that would be independent of the government machinery that could honour courageous people who unearthed corruption in the country.
He said, for example, that courageous people such as Mr Martin Amidu could be honoured by civil society for them to serve as good role models for others to take a cue from, instead of allowing them to be eaten up by “wolves”.

Daily Graphic/Ghana

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