Mahama is not opposed to decent wages – Dr Gariba

A Senior Policy Advisor at the Office of the President has rejected suggestions that the President is opposed to the principle of paying public sector workers a decent wage.

In his state of the nation’s address before parliament on Thursday February 21, President John Mahama said: “the rate of growth of the wage bill has reached a point where they are squeezing out critical investments in the budgetary allocation of goods and services and capital expenditures”

He added, “the meat is now down to the bones, and it is time for serious rethinking about the level of wages in relation to our national competiveness and the related productivity issues” and that "to whom much is given, much is expected."

When queried on Joy News current affairs program ‘Express’on Multi TV, about exactly what the President meant, Dr. Sulley Gariba said; the comments on the persistent wage increase demands were to throw a challenge to public sector workers that they must appreciate the toil of those who contribute in taxes to pay them their wages.

He said; “ordinary citizens of this country, especially poor farmers, have now made the supreme sacrifice of actually giving public sector wages nearly 70% - 7 pesewas of each cedi collected from the toiling people of this country, the real productive people… and he is basically challenging public sector workers that: is this still not enough? But at the same time as they are getting 70% on every cedi collected from the poor people, their productivity is not commensurate”

Dr. Gariba maintained that the President was throwing a national challenge to all stake holders – minority, opposition and the governing party, that they have to sit down to settle on a formula to set up a ceiling. He disagreed with suggestions that the president failed to clearly spell out any strategy to enhance productivity in the public sector.

“The second is very pointed productivity enhancement measures in agriculture, in tourism and in industry, especially focusing on the private sector… In fact throughout the presentation, he kept going back and forth to the private sector to tell Ghanaians that it’s not all that gloom, making references to Kumasi Airport for example, to throw a challenge that as there is an outburst of private sector productivity there is no commensurate increase in productivity in the public sector”; he said.

According to Dr. Gariba, the President only meant to throw a challenge to say “we’ll soon need to explore more decentralized forms of management for some of the public conglomerates to make them more accountable in delivering services faster to ordinary citizens”.

“He (the President) threw a challenge to the citizens themselves that the lack of productivity, the complacency in the public sector is both a result of inefficiency and the lack of citizen engagement: to demand more accountability to say to ECG or Ministry of Health, ‘we are paying so much in service…and we demand quality”, he added.