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| Duffuor Admits: NPP Paid Workers ‘Better’ |
3/25/2011 |
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The National Democratic Congress admitted that the New Patriotic Party administration paid nurses, teachers and other public sectors better.
A World Bank document (Report No. 47223-GH) signed by President Mills’ finance minister discloses that the Ghanaian public sector, in real terms, saw a consistent increase in her pay from 2003 to 2008 and that , at least for the first half of the current government, Ghanaians would be poorer.
The document stresses, “Increases in average wages – about 40 percent in real terms since 2006 – reflect a recovery in real wages.”
As if it was such a great sin on the part of the NPP to increase the pay of public sector workers, including teachers and nurses, the new administration then set out to roll back the gains on the wage front.
In running back to the Bretton Wood institutions in 2009 for financial support, the Mills-Mahama administration agreed that the public sector wage bill they inherited in 2009 was far too high. They then set out subsequently to reduce it and has been doing just that in the three budgets presented by Dr. Duffuor.
Our analysis show that the gradual impoverishment of the Ghana public sector worker, at least, under President Mills, is but a deliberate Government policy to reduce the public wage bill. For example, the 2011 budget for total emolument represented the smallest nominal annual increase in the Forth Republic (since 1992).Ironically, this happened in Action year, the very year that civil servants, teachers, nurses and doctors are all scheduled to migrate onto the Single Spine Salary Structure.
Also, at the heart of the current teacher agitation is the increasing hardship that teachers have been made to endure under President Mills, himself a former teacher and, what worried analysts see to be, the growing disregard for education, generally.
For instance, in 2000, when Prof Mills was the Vice President and head of the Economic Management Team, the education budget was $360.7 million, representing 3.8% of GDP By 2008, the NPP had increased the education budget to $1,172.7 million, representing 7.2% of GDP, doubling the percentage to GDP.
Today, with the NDC back in office, the education budget has again gone down to 6.3% of the projected 2011 GDP, from 6.6% of GDP in 2010.
“By this rate we risk ending up below the 2000 rate if we continue to keep the NDC in office a day later than January 7, 2013,” says Nana Attaborah, head of research, Danquah Institute.
The evidence of this worker pauperization is contained in two different pacts signed with the IMF and the World Bank in 2009, which promised the Government of Ghana money in return.
The World Bank document, signed by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor reads at paragraph 82: “The public sector in Ghana faces a number of challenges. At over 11 percent of GDP, Ghana’s public sector payroll stands as one of the largest ratios in Africa, where the average is at about 6 percent. The wage bill is a heavy burden on the country’s budget, representing 49 percent of Government revenue in 2008.”
Source: New statesman
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