Reduce “elephant-size” gov’t in your second term – Haruna tells Akufo-Addo

Four years after running what has been described as the biggest government in Ghana’s history, the  Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu has asked President Akufo-Addo to desist from repeating that number of appointments.

The Tamale South MP, who described the size of the government as ‘elephant’ believes the huge government had an adverse impact on the public purse, without a corresponding output.

In his final words on the Floor of the House of the 7th parliament, Mr Iddrisu admonished President Akufo-Addo who was declared the winner in the 2020 elections, to appoint few people in his second term.

This would not be the first time the legislator has expressed an opposing view on the more than 120 ministers and deputies of the Akufo-Addo government.

“I’m not sure this is what President Nana Addo Dankwa promised the people of Ghana. Each of these ministers and their deputies will come with a cost, secretariats will run and the incidental costs would be incurred and that now confirms why they are allocating Ghc1.5billion to the office of government machinery, which far exceeds the budget of 27 ministries combined,” he lamented in March 2017.

“We in the Minority, we are disappointed that they have no respect for the size of government, they have no desire to run an austere measure in order to protect the public purse”.

Several critics and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) held a similar view and advised the president in his first tenure to review the appointments.

However, the government maintained its structure for the first four years of the NPP government.

Mr Akufo-Addo is expected to name members of his government for his second term after being sworn into office on December 7.

What were the concerns of the CSOs?

President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, was of the view that maintaining such a huge government will drain the country’s resources stifling funding of developmental programmes.

“Reduce the size of government in terms of personnel and ministries. We have too many ministers for a small country like Ghana”, Franklin advised in 2018.

Pressure Group, Occupy Ghana, also indicated that it would worsen corruption.

“The problems that beset this nation are known to all. Paramount among them is the issue of corruption. In creating such a huge bureaucracy, have we not increased the chances of corrupt officials plundering the little that we have left as a nation? In his inaugural address, the President promised to protect the national purse.

“The appointment of 110 ministers who, in comparison to the average Ghanaian, will be earning a considerable amount of money in salaries, allowances and benefits over the next 4 years (in addition to enjoying a range of ex-gratia benefits when they leave office) does not sound to us like a diligent attempt to protect a sorely-depleted purse,” a release by the group said.