Downsizing ministers and avoiding wastage a good move – Franklin Cudjoe

President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has welcomed the decision by political parties to downsize the number of ministers after the 2024 elections.

He believes that, over the years, bloated ministries and agencies have never brought any form of merit to the people of Ghana other than just wastefulness.

Comparing Ghana with other countries he has been privileged to visit, he said “these merged units in the two countries showed that their workers were more productive and saved the taxpayer loads of passive-aggressive bureaucrats”.

To Franklin Cudjoe, “We need to stop this habit of dicing up ministries into funny agencies drawing needless public funds and returning ZERO value”.

Read his post below:

It is great news once again to hear the two major contenders in this election, NDC and Bawumia promising to downsize the obviously large, uncontrollable and wasteful government ever in the history of Ghana.

Hopefully there would be a clever realignment of ministries, chopping off a few or merging related ones. I found through my travels that a far more prosperous Australia was cutting cost by doing the obvious. They merged Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries ‘ministries’ under one department (see photo taken in 2015). They have also merged departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade and call it DFAT.

I found the same in the UK when I visited the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

It was clear from my interactions with directors of these merged units in the two countries that their workers were more productive and saved the tax payer loads of passive aggressive bureaucrats.

We need to stop this habit of dicing up ministries into funny agencies drawing needless public funds and returning ZERO value.

Good morning from the Middle East