Professor Justice Bawole, the Head of Public Administration and Health Services Management at the University of Ghana Business School, has indicated that calls for a law to be passed to cap the number of staffers a president can have will only amount to an exercise in futility.
According to him, “governments around the world grow depending on what is being demanded by the citizenry at a given time and makes it impossible to legislate on the size of governments”.
Prof. Bawole disagreed with those who had stressed the need for a legislation on the numbers saying, “They spoke about us legislating numbers, I’m sorry, it is not feasible to legislate numbers because, as I said governments grow and is a global trend, and many times the growth of government is driven by the demands of the citizenry, when citizens are demanding for things that were hitherto not being provided for by governments and response will mean find people and money to do it.”
The discussion followed the Minority in Parliament’s worry over the government’s intention to increase the number of presidential staffers from 998 to 1,614 as captured in the 2019 budget statement presented to Parliament by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta.
Even though the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has dismissed the minority’s claims, Prof. Bawole acknowledged it is a common practice especially in developing countries for governments to grow in seizes but observed “what is the peculiar challenge for Ghana is over the years, our public services have been extremely expensive.
“Comparatively, Ghana spends more of its Gross Domestic Product on public service thus running an expensive public service, the challenging thing for Ghana is dealing with people who get into the public service through the political angle as a result of political employment and there are already signs there is going to be an increase in the size of the government when the president started appointing “presidential ministers,” Prof Bawole noted. -3news.com
