The Auditor General, Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo, has made a strong call for hardworking Public Servants to be rewarded so that others will feel motivated to work. He added that non-performing public servants should also be sanctioned to ensure higher productivity and development of the nation. He said there is an urgent need to implement a sanction and reward regime to restore discipline and productivity in the public service. Mr. Domelevo made the call in Accra during the 3rd Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu Memorial Lecture.
Delivering the lecture, Mr. Domelevo said “too many people in the country’s public sector do very little at work for the country. For every one hardworking staff, several others do nothing,” The A-G attributed this to indiscipline which has engulfed various public offices. He said “there is a breakdown of discipline in many public institutions and this is affecting service quality and delivery”. He said the situation where public servants come to work late and leave earlier than expected amounts to stealing public time describing it as another form of corruption because “we get paid for those hours we do not work”.
Drawing an analogy between the western world and Ghana, he said “people go to work even when it is snowing while when the clouds gather we don’t turn up for work”. He said the tendency of using heavy traffic, distance, family commitments and other things to justify lateness must not be tolerated.
Mr. Domelevo posited that Ghana can only develop if we have a productive and highly efficient public service. “Nothing can be done without the public service. From business registration to obtaining permit- everything involves the public servant”, he stated. He likened the relationship between the private and public sectors to an engine and fuel noting, “if the private sector is the engine of growth, the public sector is the fuel for the engine and no engine can run on dirty fuel”. He emphasised, “it is time to look at the rules again; there should be consequences for non-performance and there should be consequences for indiscipline in the public sector”.
The Auditor-General ended his speech with the thoughts of Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, a former Director General of the Ghana Health Service thus “we need to remain patriotic, and commit ourselves to nation building, by possessing values of discipline and good morals to help promote national unity and cohesion… for Ghana is the only country we have and God has a reason for not creating us as Europeans or Latinos”.
The Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu Memorial Lecture was established in 2014 to recognize and immortalize the life and works of Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu a Chartered Accountant, Politician and Public Servant, who died in office whilst serving as Ghana’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning. The Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu Memorial Lectures are organised under the generic theme of sound management and accounting for Ghana’s public finances. This year’s Lecture was under the theme “Protecting the Public Purse-keeping the gate shut before the horse bolts” and was held on Thursday, 20 September, 2018.
