Under-performing Ministries would have staff ‘fired’ - Minister

Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation, says he has tasked his staff to sack workers that are under performing in the Ministries.

He said like the President, he also had zero tolerance for people not delivering, and would do all in his capacity to make sure government flagship programmes were achieved before 2020.

The Minister said this at a ‘Stakeholders Validation Workshop of Government Results Framework for Priority Programmes’ in Accra.

He said the country needed to see results, and he was not seeing the results the way he wanted to see them, saying that: “Ghanaians are not satisfied, and the Ministers have a mandate to be able to tell us the progress we have made by the first quarter of 2020”.

Dr Akoto Osei said Ministers in the current government were not allowed to give the ‘am not aware’ pitch at cabinet meetings, when asked on the progress they had made on policy programmes, exhibiting governments commitment to achieving its flagship programmes in time.

“My Ministry is not to overshadow the policy progress monitoring and evaluation units the ministries already had set up, we (the monitoring and evaluation ministry), on the Presidents behalf, hold Ministers accountable to the President during cabinet meetings, and not civil servants”

“If you are a Minister and you don’t know what the objectives of the ministry are, you don’t deserve to be there. The Minister is answerable to the President and not the Civil Service, so the Ministers must own their programmes”, he added.

He said contrary to the perception that the Ministry was formed to police his colleague Ministers, the monitoring and evaluation ministry was in existence to facilitate results, and not find faults.

Dr Akoto Osei stated that the current staff of the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation was over-worked, referencing that they had about 11 National Service Personnel and could use more staff, adding: “we would need to add some more staff to be able to do some work”.

He admitted that because the Ministry was new, it had its challenges like any other new ministry, but with monitoring and evaluation help from non-governmental organisations and donors, the ministry would thrive.

Ms Nana Serwah Amoako, the Special Advisor and Head of Government Results Delivery at the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation, said there public service in the country had gaps in its data analysis, real time data communication, and data collection in terms of its monitoring and evaluation services and could be strengthened.

She said the ministry had collaborated with other countries to learn modern and best monitoring and evaluation ways that it would adopt to close that gap.

She said the Ministry would focus on monitoring and evaluation of government flagship programmes while the pre-existing National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) focused on monitoring and evaluation of other government projects.

Ms Serwah Amoako noted that Monitoring and Evaluation was an important sector that played a key role in the development of the country.