We need more human resource at the National Development Planning Commission – Chairperson
The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) Chairperson has expressed concerns about the lack of sufficient human personnel to execute its aims and objectives.
Dr Kodjo Esseim Mensah-Abrampa said the situation affects the Commission in the execution of its mandate.
In an exclusive interview with Benjamin Akakpo on the AM Show on Monday, he stated that even though his outfit requires more human capital, it is confronted with the challenges of recruitment in the public sector.
“The challenge we are facing, and I must be frank with ourselves, has to do with the capacity of NDPC itself. Much as we have very good technical people here who’re doing the work, we need more to be able to accommodate the kind of work that we are doing.
“Coordination which was quite a bit of hedgy, in fact a bit of weak, two years, three years ago, and we’re tightening that, because that is important for avoiding duplication, for avoiding redundancy, you need to tighten coordination. And in doing that we needed expertise”, he stated.
He also added that for employment in the public sector, “you need to go through the whole process; technical clearance, financial clearance and therefore the tightening of the budget affects us, in term of clearance.
“So we’re still being challenged in some of those areas. One of it has to do in the area of organisation. We realise two years ago that we didn’t have an urban expert here, who could take up the issue of urbanisation”.
Mensah-Abrampa revealed that owing to the absence of an urban expert at the Commission, the Commission had to rely on experts at the Land Use and Planning Authority and personnel from local government authorities, at a time when the Commission was approaching the global world forum for urbanisation.
This, he said, affected coordination and, therefore, called for the challenge to be resolved.
The comments by the NDPC boss comes at in the wake of recent tensions between civil servants and government, over the the failure of the latter to pay the neutrality allowances of the civil servants.
Therefore, the aggrieved civil servants embark on a strike to register their dissatisfaction.
The members of the Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) are to return to work today after calling off its three-strike over the payment of neutrality allowance.
CLOGSAG laid down its tools on Thursday, April 21, following the inability of government to pay the neutrality allowance as agreed in January this year.
The strike compelled work at the various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to ground to a halt.
Even though Ghanaians criticised the workers for their decision to strike over such an allowance, they insisted it was necessary.
However, the Association called off the three-week strike on Thursday, May 12.
At a press conference on Thursday, Isaac Bampoe-Addo, the Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, said the decision to step down from the industrial action followed a decision taken by its National Executive Council after an agreement was reached government.
“At its meeting held on Thursday, May 12, 2022, the National Executive Council of the Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) decided to call off the nationwide strike by its members.
“The rationale to step down the industrial action was based on the demand from the Ministry of Finance to direct the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to effect payment of the agreed allowance, has been met on May 11, 2022.”
Meanwhile, government has said it will implement all agreements in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Association.
It has, however, dropped the controversial Neutrality Allowance.
Source: Ghana News
