It’s a shame NPP is defending 998 Jubilee House staff - Cudjoe

16:56 - 24 April 2018

The President of IMANI Africa Franklin Cudjoe said the justification by government appointees and NPP sympathisers was hypocritical and sad.

The president of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, has said that it’s sad that the NPP government which criticised the number of employees at the then Flagstaff House when they were in opposition are strongly defending the staggering 998 staff at the Jubilee House.

His response comes after a report released showed that the Presidency had 998 staffs for the period January 7, 2017, to December 31, 2017.

The breakdown was as follows 9 Ministers of State, 27 presidential staffers, 256 Junior Political Appointees and 706 civil and public servants.

This number is some 220 staff more than the 778 employees presented to parliament by the erstwhile John Mahama administration in 2013.

This angered many Ghanaians who called out the Nana Addo administration for their deceit and hypocrisy.

Gabby Asare Otchere Darko, a senior member of the New Patriotic Party and a former Executive Director of policy think tank Danquah Institute (DI) justified the 998 figure, saying that President Akufo-Addo prioritises results over a lean government.

“Akufo-Addo has never put lean government before a government that delivers. I recall in 2006, we were working on a speech and when I mentioned ‘lean government’, he told me to point blankly that our situation in Ghana calls more for a well-resourced government machinery that can deliver,” he wrote on his Facebook Wall.

However, President of IMANI Africa Franklin Cudjoe said this position was hypocritical and sad.

“I think the conversation has to be about whether we have efficient denominator to go on with,” he said on Accra-based Starr FM.

“The sad thing though,” he bemoaned, “is that, the same persons who a while back were chastising previous governments for running a bloated bureaucracy are today defending the same bloated number by suggesting he [President Akufo-Addo] didn’t promise a lean government.”

“…That’s where my disappointed really lies, realizing that we have been double speaking and I don’t think it is fair. So anyhow you look at it my worry and disappointment is in the fact that they haven’t paid fidelity to the fact and it is of course worrying,” he added.