Edward Boateng, Director-General of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), has blamed the public service’s low productivity and performance on a lack of punishments.
The SIGA CEO implied that, unlike the commercial sector, which sanctions workers for poor performance and productivity, the public sector is frequently left unsecured, with no targets required of employees.
Bemoaning the situation on Face to Face on Citi TV, Mr. Boateng said “there are no repercussions for non-delivery in Ghana and that is an issue.
There are KPIs [important performance indicators], but they are not enforced, and what we are doing now is ensuring that the government’s KPIs are enforced.”
He also stated that the government has taken a new strategy in which employees in the public sector sign a performance contract that is evaluated yearly in order to hold low-performing state-owned firms and their employees accountable.
He did, however, admit that “there are serious problems that we must address, and we are addressing them by creating an award structure to promote those who are doing well and condemn those who are not.”
“Like the president told us at Kwahu, he praised TDC [Tema Development Council] and the others at the top, but those in the bottom five are expected to climb up,” he added.
He also disclosed that “the responsibility matrix we use is helping to push people who are put in charge SOEs to realize that they have to perform or the torch will be shone on them and so this is making people to move away from the kiosk mentality to a corporate mentality and we are making headways”.
