Independent presidential hopeful, Dr. Sam Ankrah, has declared his commitment to streamline government operations, to work with only 20 ministers if elected as president.
In an interview on GhanaWeb's Lowdown, Dr. Ankrah outlined his vision for a more efficient and cost-effective administration.
“This is how we are going to run this administration. We are talking about only 20 ministers, no regional ministers,” he stated.
Explaining further, Dr. Ankrah emphasised the importance of devolving political power to the grassroots level.
To him, the current politics being practised in the country is not felt at the grassroots level and to ensure this, District Chief Executives (DCEs) would be elected to ensure accountability.
“We will make sure DCEs are elected. The intent is to make sure that politics is felt at the grassroots. Because at the moment, it is not and people are not benefiting. So, we want to make sure that the DCEs would run their districts under a local government and rural development ministry which will take care of all the DCEs across the nation minus regional ministers. We are looking for only 20 solid ministers to run this nation,” he noted.
Addressing concerns about the size of the government budget, Dr. Ankrah highlighted the need for sustainability and efficiency.
He said: "Our current government budget is huge and not sustainable. The UK, with a population of about 65 million, has only about 350,000 people on their payroll. Ghana with only 31 million has over 1 million people on our payroll and the shenanigans of sitting allowances, per diems, Land Cruisers and all these things are huge and not sustainable."
“We need to cut the government size drastically and we intend to do so, minimum by 50% and other programmes that when we get there we will talk about,” he added.
Ghana is expected to go to the polls on December 7, 2024, for the presidential and parliamentary elections.
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