Dr. Ato Arthur
Head of Local Government Service (LGS), Dr. Ato Arthur, has denied a story about a so-called layoff of staff within the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) across the country.
At a press conference yesterday in Accra to set the records straight, he described the publication as false, explaining that the medium which carried the story failed to appreciate and understand staff rationalisation, which was discussed with all MMDAs at a meeting held in Accra.
He said “the speech read on my behalf as the Head of Civil Service referred to was staff rationalisation, which is a human resource management tool for internally deploying staff to places where their services are most needed”. This, he added, is in line with systems and procedures the public service works with.
He explained that the Local Government Service has the mandate to post all staff recruited to the various MMDAs across the country for them to be posted from the metro to other parts of the region, as part of fulfilling the decentralisation agenda of the service.
The rationalisation here is that, there are more administrative officers at the regions than those at the assemblies. This is particularly true for most people who would always want to stay in the urban areas which are usually more resourced than the rural areas. Rationalisation is therefore not to layoff but to ensure that distribution within the MMDAs are not skewed but distributed fairly, he added.
To achieve such an objective, the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) were charged to ensure staff were adequately and equitably distributed in all the regions.
He further explained that he has never on any occasion mentioned it anywhere that staff were going to be laid off neither has government nor any official from his outfit said anywhere that workers would be laid off.
Dr. Arthur, however, stated that given the current educational calendar for the year, his outfit has planned to carry out this exercise by the close of the year to enable staff who would go on transfer to some of the areas to have their wards enrolled in schools to begin the academic year.
“We have really attached a human face to this exercise to ensure we give our staff opportunity for them to prepare when they are reposted to their new areas. We have therefore not given a deadline to the exercise but considering December 2022 so that the exercise does not affect the staff and their dependents,” he added.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah