It’s huhuhuhu widespread disquiet among the ?sono middle class core constituency.
Change voters are unwilling to say 110 ministers is good. However, they’d rather stay mute for fear of yaanom capitalising on propagating it in their selfish chop, chop interest. Frankly, the decision is pessimistically ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ not the preferred optimism of ‘nam dodo? ns?e nkwan’ (too much meat doesn’t spoil the soup). GOODWILL.
The 110 number hit me so hard I felt 110 Dalmatians and not the usual 101 Dalmatians. Any mention of 100 and something is dreading if you have had to read that bedtime story to a toddler who would insist, night after night, on only that one, out of a shelf full, being read to him.
He became so familiar with it he would say words, phrases and sentences ahead. If you skipped something he would remind you. To the adult reader that was stiff boredom.
It’s ?sonomma ideology amiss. They and their kind preach small government and try to practise it when in government. However, I remember ?sono kokuroko of middle income achiever fame’s confession that he thought he could perform better as president with more ministers than what he had appointed.
It’s unconvincing that the huge/mammoth ministerial numbers will deliver one district one factory and one village one dam or one constituency one million dollars. If it should take 110 ministers to achieve that as value for money, it would have been a positive Machiavellian end. The flipside will be unjustified means because it wouldn’t end positively.
Free schooling branded free education is a good test case. There’s a minister of education who has been assigned three deputies to support him. An additional minister at the presidency has the specific job of handling tertiary education. When Kwaku Boateng was Higher Education minister, I was too young to know any tensions or cooperation between him and J.B. Erzuah, then pre-university education minister.
Not the tension between Minister of Education Ameyaw Akumfi and Minister of State in-charge of Gender in Education Christine Churcher. One recalls the ‘who has the right to park at the designated single ministerial parking spot at the ministry’s premises.’ A minister with higher education administration experience may not necessarily have in-depth knowledge of the theory, science and art of educational practice. Thus, maybe it’s not the best sector ministerial loading.
Charged to ensure value for money as teachers’ (and nurses’) allowances are restored, it’s implications as extra burden on the free high school education financing may lead to a clash of whose ideas should prevail.
Can it be the minister with responsibility of ensuring free quality education or a minister of state responsible for a small hived piece of that ministry? I wish I knew the reporting lines. If both ministers are to report directly to their one boss, it should be a concern as to how a parallel system would have greater results vis-à-vis a system that would have seen one minister reporting to the boss.
With student allowances going up and high school all free, the education budget is already stretched. Meanwhile, this is one area where the investment in human capital will take years to show tangible results. Yet, without that kind of investment, you cannot claim to be building a nation. How value for money is achieved in the education sector as a whole becomes a real challenge with five ministers to maintain.
Layered reporting lines seem more effective than paralleling rivalry. Also, 110 is one minister too many. Not much seems to be left beyond a wait and see. It would be interesting if IMANI for one would diligently (with dispassion) do the cost-benefit analysis to confirm of refute that indeed, we are in for value for money governance.
If those you expected to say small is beautiful are now saying huge is better, it means times have indeed changed. But remember even congresspeople preached change during the 2016 electioneering. Small or big, my compatriots may reluctantly not care. What they care about, though, is, perhaps, not small or big per se. For sure, though, they care about real money-in-pocket development in freedom.
My compatriots are murmuring and even seething with anger. They expect president to do more with less. If ?sonomma strategy is more (a whopping salary bill of GHc20 million plus) for more development, the explanation isn’t that convincing against value for money. I do recognise, though, a civil service loyalty heavily stacked against ?sonomma (35 years congress recruiting versus ?sono’s eight years). That’s a big challenge to ?sono’s mission to arrive at vision. My take, a quick retreat to drastically curb the ministerial numbers, with graduated increase if need be. That would positively project a listening government image.