I have heard the many impassioned commentaries on the comments by Brigadier Nunoo Mensah (Rtd), former Chief of Defense Staff and current National Security Advisor. The Brigadier was commenting on the strike action being contemplated by a section of Ghanaian workers, in response to the prevailing harsh economic conditions in the country. Let me state upfront that I do not know Brigadier Nunoo Mensah personally. I remember his name in the heady days of the PNDC, and thought then that his name synched quite well with the title “Chief of Defense Staff”. That’s all.
From what I gather, the Brigadier recognizes the right of any worker or group of workers to embark on a strike action, according to provisions in our Constitution. However, he questions the contradictory posture of going on strike in order to engineer an improvement in working conditions, among them, an increase in workers’ salaries, while at the same time insisting on laying down the tools of work in order to achieve their goal - pay increases. Simply put, you want more pay, and your way of getting that increased pay is to stop work? That’s a contradiction. Will those workers be willing to pay Government for the days off work as a result of their strike action? Brigadier Mensah’s comments suggest a better approach will be to make the demands while still at post, so that the nation doesn’t suffer unduly. It is a patriotic call; it is what builds nations, not what destroys them. It is in the wake of presenting these arguments that he comments that if the situation is that bad, then those complaining should leave the country for anywhere else they feel conditions are better.
Part of the reason for this article is to comment, as it is my entitlement as a citizen of Ghana to so do, and to state my clear position on the matter. The Brigadier is right. You cannot take such an apparently contradictory position in trying to achieve the very goal that your actions will hurt. In short, you cannot go forward by going backwards. However, there is also another, and perhaps larger reason, why I have taken this opportunity to share my thoughts on this matter. The issue of strike action as an instrument of leverage in negotiations with governments in Ghana has become almost intractable. To understand this matter, a bit of history is important.
When Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was imprisoned by the Colonial Government as part of its anti-independence crack-down, the colonialists perhaps under-estimated the popularity of Kwame Nkrumah and the depth of his politics among Ghanaians, notably Ghanaian workers. However, this symbiosis was so deep that partly as a reward for workers’ efforts in the independence struggle, etc., Nkrumah built the TUC Hall for workers, it would appear, permanently cementing this relationship. The need to efficiently “manage our own affairs” quickly led to vast expansions in the government’s workforce, of course spurred on by the socialist bent of Nkrumah’s politics. This is how the Government quickly became the largest employer in the country.
Of course, the Ghana Government is not the only one in the world with a large work force. The size of the US Government’s workforce dwarfs that of Ghana’s by comparison. The difference in the US case is that despite its size, it is much smaller in terms of the entire workforce in the United States. Where the Government of Ghana spends about 70 per cent of its revenue on paying only Government workers, the US spends a very small fraction of its revenue. In more stark terms the US Federal Governments employs about 2.79 million people, in a population of some 314 million; that is, about negative 41375 (-41375) in negative 4656612 people (-4656612). In real life what does this mean? It means that the fraction is so negligible it is even smaller than one per cent of the population; it is even smaller than zero, and once you go pass zero, you are in negative territory, something abnormal in the life of population measurements (-41375/-465612), unless of course we are counting dead workers. In contrast, the Ghana Government employs about 600,000 people in a population of some 25 million people; that is, for about every 125 people in the country, three of them who are workers are likely Government of Ghana workers. See the difference?
Now the US economy is a multi-trillion dollar economy. For example, national defense alone takes about 19 per cent of Federal tax dollars. In Ghana, the Government’s workforce of 600,000 workers takes about 70 per cent of Government’s tax revenue. And the US Defense budget dwarfs every budget line item on earth. Period. Understandable, since defense is EVERYTHING for the USA. It is like doing everything to protect the most IMPORTANT part of your business, the heart of your raison d’être. So in business, we say you spend money to make money. You put your resources in the most productive part of your business because you know the returns on that expenditure are could be huge. It follows that you will not continue to pour money into a section of your business that is losing money, or that is unproductive, I lie? So let’s ask a fundamental question of our government workers – how productive is the civil service/ public service of the Republic of Ghana? What is their contribution to productivity (GDP)?
Frankly, we don’t know. The numbers are not available and unreliable. This is simply because we do not have a consistent and uniform way to measure their productivity. The models available, notably from the World Bank and IMF are incapable of any accurate measures because many of the factors to be considered are absent. As a result, it is suspected statisticians often fudge the numbers to get a “fair estimate”. I say, the reason we are unable to actually measure the productivity of Government workers is because there are no clearly defined processes and methods of work in the civil service/public service. If you doubt this, pick any task you like. Go to the relevant government agency in Ghana to address the matter. Chances are any number of officers you are able to meet on the matter will give you any number of approaches. What this tells me is that it leaves resolution of matters to conjecture and personal style. Give the same task to a different person and send that person to the same agency and you will get different answers. For an example, take a situation in which every Ghanaian has a different method of acquiring a driver’s license or a police report. This arbitrariness is what creates the room for massive corruption. Corruption - that is another matter for another day.
So we cannot measure the productivity of the workforce that consumes the lion’s share Government revenue in Ghana. Still it is the same workforce that is constantly demanding pay increases from its employer. It is the same workforce that constantly uses the option of a strike action as leverage on Government during negotiations. And often, the Government acquiesces to their demands. Why? Simple – our government officials, I mean the politicians, are as incompetent as the civil/publics servants are unproductive. Think about it for a minute. A good number of these officials are in fact theorists. Many of them can’t even run their own homes properly. They come to the office not as a result of prior consistent productive work, but due to some “contribution” to a political party’s victory at elections. Many of them take up these ministerial positions completely ignorant of the most basic skills required for the work. So they arrive at a Ministry, completely at the mercy of Chief Directors, Directors, etc., as was evident from the recent PURC officials dictating tariffs to the Government. So although our politicians have the responsibility for fixing our problems, they are hostage to a hugely patronizing, schematic and unproductive civil/public service who have the benefit of knowing more about what’s going on, than the political appointee Minister, with or without Honour.
Within the government agencies right now, the only thing often mentioned is “single spine”. If you lived outside this country and just arrived, you are more likely to quickly know what “single spine” is about than find your way out of Accra Mall. Every one of them is talking “single spine”. Despite the generally agreed generous pay system introduced, productivity remains unchanged if not worse; they continue to demand pay increases and behave badly. If your business is unproductive and remains the most expensive item on your budget, won’t you shut it down, realign your capital or trim it down? None of these is happening at the civil/public service. Government upon government jumps whenever the TUC or workers threaten a strike. We need to learn from late US President Reagan when he ordered all Air Traffic Controllers fired – yes, fired, all 11, 345 of them. Firing all of the over 600,000 civil/public servants of Ghana may not exactly be a good idea, but the point to be taken is that Reagan’s actions gave the US Federal Government an opportunity to re-organize this perpetually striking workforce; it also gave Traffic Controllers to reflect a little on what’s good for them and the country.
As Ghanaians, we need to re-organize our civil/public service and recalibrate Government’s relationship with its workers, for a better Ghana. We need to work hard, be more productive, fight corruption and ensure that not only the Nana Akuffo Addos or the John Dramani Mahamas can get speedy due process in not just the Supreme Court of Ghana but any Court in the land for that matter. Every citizen, indeed, non-citizens as well, should have the same access. That is how the country works for everyone. To have this kind of fair and equitable access, we must establish standard processes of work and measurable outcomes for productivity. That way everyone can then really be paid by how much productive work they have done. Otherwise, we should all take a hike, perhaps to the place suggested by Brigadier Nunoo Mensah – a place that is greener that Ghana.
Francis Dery
deryfrancis@yahoo.com
