Ken Ofori-Atta, Finance Minister
More than ever, I had a bit of hope for this press engagement. More than ever, this is the most disappointing press engagement Ghanaians have experienced in the past 2 decades.
After all the hardship Ghanaians are going through, the finance minister and his uncle decided to use a significant part of our little funds, in fact, our widow´s mite, to organize a hollow press engagement (to be more charitable to a sitting government).
It is not surprising that the good people of Ghana, after the presentation, have shown extreme resentment and frustration towards such insensitive statements.
It is heart-wrenching for the finance minister to say that they have sacrificed just 30 percent of their salaries for nine months.
To set the ball rolling, let me serve as a reminder to the good and discerning people of Ghana. Do you recall or better still, do you know that the allowances of every government appointee are 30 to 60 percent of their gross salary? To be emphatic, the allowances of a political appointee under this government are more than five times their gross salaries.
So, for instance, the salary of Adwoa Sarfo, the senior minister of Ghana is around 30,000 Ghana Cedis. Her allowances as a percentage of her salary for a month will be 150,000 or more. Hence, you can see clearly that the 30percent pay cut is just a deception and a mirage, just to buy public sympathy. However, they should know that the Ghanaian today is wiser than he was yesterday.
Oh yes, another rip-off strategy adopted to deceive their ´fellow Ghanaians´ in the name of sacrificing for them. We, as Ghanaians, also deserve to taste the icing on the cake, we have eaten the unbaked dough for far too long.
If truly, the government wants to show leadership; a sense of care, love, charity, and affection to its´ fellow citizens in this avoidable crisis they led us into, they should sustain their salaries and repeal all their allowances for the rest of their term in office. This action will give us more money than the sadistic e-levy they are seeking.
If this government decides to forgo their allowances and cut the budget of the presidency by half, we will be out of this economic mess and we will disregard the soon-to-be-born creature called E-levy.