‘Charitable Salaries’ Contributes To US$300m Revenue Loss - IMANI Ghana

The GHS80million compensation to the Local Government Ministry, with a staff strength exceeding that of the Chieftaincy Ministry by 500, but receiving the same amount in budgetary allocation as the latter, is not in the right direction, says Mr Franklin Cudjoe, President of Policy Think-Tank IMANI Ghana.

Explaining to the Goldstreet Business at the 2nd Roundtable Discussion of the Ghana Good Corporate Governance Initiative in Accra, Cudjoe observed that the GHS80 million to the Chieftaincy Ministry, most of which goes into ‘charitable payment’ of salaries and allowances to Paramount Chiefs and Queen Mothers across the country is worrying.

The same amount to the Local Government Ministry, which has a bigger responsibility of executing policies at the local level, according to him, should be critically considered.

“Paramount Chiefs take GHS1000 while the Queens are paid GHS800 every month from the national coffers. Such voluntary payments add nothing to our economy, to be paying people who have not been employed to contribute revenue” he noted.

He said the act, which the current government is also pursuing, led to the loss of US$300 million in budgets overrun from the office of government machinery alone, from 2008 – 2016.

The challenge he said, cannot be attributed to the needless payment of salaries and allowances only, but also due to procurement anomalies and corruption at the Office of the President during the period.

“We [IMANI] did a paper recently, saying that, if the procurement practices of the Office of government machinery were checked, the current administration would have saved US$50 million already”

“The 70 percent revenue, which goes into the payment of salaries in the country, does not auger well for us especially as we seek to attain some economic freedom devoid of aid. Being paid without working is total waste to Ghana,” he noted.

Executive Chairman of Krif Foundation, Rev. Kennedy Okosun, one of the facilitators at the event, noted that the 2016 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency International, released in January 2017, ranked Ghana at 36 in Africa and 70 in the world.

The country’s fluctuating performance and position on the Index, he noted, implies that it is still not winning the fight against corruption.

“The challenge with corruption and good governance is that, it is politicized, denying us the opportunity to dispassionately dissect, analyze and find solutions to it” he observed.

The event was organized by Krif Ghana in collaboration with the American Embassy and the Action Faith Chapel International.