998 staff: You wanted jobs, they were created – Minister jumps to Akufo-Addo's defense

A man who has the interest of the populace at heart and as such is making efforts to heed to its concerns by creating jobs should be lauded and praised rather than criticized, Deputy Information Minister, Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei has said in defense of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The ruling government has come under massive criticism following the release of a list of 998 staffers at the presidency. Concerns have been raised over the alarmingly large size of persons employed to work at the seat of government considering that the same government pledged to secure and protect the public purse and prevent waste.

In their defense however, Minister of Information emerged to say that despite the numbers, they have spent relatively low considering how much; 3 billion, the Mahama administration spent budget-wise on their staffers even with a lower number; 768. Some other officials argued that the output rather than the input should be looked at.

Adding her voice to the debate, Nana Ama Dokua believes Akufo-Addo has done a yeoman’s job by recruiting these number of persons at the presidency as a form of employment creation and should be acknowledged in that regard accordingly.

“Some Ghanaians keep complaining that there is no job and so Nana Addo in a bid to make them happy has recruited that number to work. They should rather laud the President for creating jobs for people to also work instead of attacking him always” she said on Accra Based Okay FM.



For her, critics of the 998 figure are not even in a position to do so because they “did worse things when they were in power and so they have no case”.

She reiterated the previous point by her colleagues that ouput rather than figures should be the focus of Ghanaians in analyzing the issue.

“In these things, the numbers per se are not the most important because it’s about input and output. The line of interrogation should be what the number of staffers are producing and not just talk about the numbers” she maintained.