Poor remuneration killing Statistical Service

dailyEXPRESS enquires at the Statistical Service have revealed that most of the Service’s trained personnel keep leaving to seek better job prospects elsewhere because of poor service conditions and lack of motivation.

A senior staff told this paper that staff retention has become difficult especially among the younger employees, turning the Service into more or less, a springboard for better prospects.

“It has become difficult to retain most of the young but experienced employees here. They stay on for a while, look for opportunities elsewhere and before you realize they are gone. Some of them do not even give prior information before leaving,” the source said.

There also appears to be a subdued tension among the workers over the delay to appoint substantive Chief Statisticians since the departure of Dr. Oti Boateng. The current practice has been a resort to appointing the chief statistician in an acting capacity.

“The GSS has had a problem of maintaining leadership at its top hierarchy since 1999 when it had an acting government statistician as has been the case presently (since mid-2006) with its last substantive head being appointed in 2004,” the source noted.

Workers are concerned that these will not create the needed consistency in the leadership policy of the service.

“The problem is that though they are qualified, they come with their own ideas and policy and if the previous one’s policy does not fall into the other’s policy then, that very policy has to be taken out. This creates a lot of difficulties for our work schedule and plans for the future,” the source added.

The current government statistician is Professor N. N. N Nsowah-Nuamah who took over from the then acting chief statistician and Grace Bediako who proceeded on leave somewhere last year. Confirming the above concerns, another senior official told the dailyEXPRESS that this does not create consistency in leadership policy. The two officials called for an improvement to the situation in the Service and also appealed for the early release of moneys for projects to be executed on time. “The offices of the GSS must be brought up to standards befitting its status and functions.”

The activities of the Statistical Service are funded mainly by government (which has of late been credited with improving the release of funds) with additional inflows coming in from development partners, for specific activities like conducting population census.

Again the source said most of the service’s activities such as an exercise to sensitize Ghanaians on the 2010 population census have been temporarily suspended.

“We can go ahead with the exercise only when all the funds or part of the needed funds is realized,”