Public Sector Workers Deserve Zero Salary Increment, Says Erratic Prof. Adei

Former Board Chairman for the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Prof. Stephen Adei, has warned that public sector workers should not have been given salary increments this year.

In an interview on Accra-based Class FM, he is reported as saying that even the 4% acrimonious raise in the minimum wage for 2021 and 2022, which the public sector workers have been agitating over, is too generous and that they ought to have been given zero increase.

“… The people saying [the] 4 percent [pay rise] is not enough; actually, to be honest, it should have been zero percent. Yes”, Prof Adei told Kofi Oppong Asamoah in the pre-recorded interview that was aired on Wednesday, 29 September 2021.

 “It should have been zero across the board because the message should have been sent that we are in a crisis, so, we can’t have ‘Monkey dey chop baboon dey work’”, he explained.

Yet, while making his observation, President Akufo Addo and the entire Presidency had massively increased both their pay and spending money astronomically and had sparked deep anger from workers and the public for the double standards.

On 18 August 2021, some aggrieved public sector workers demonstrated in the national capital, Accra, against the 4 percent and 7 percent rise in their base salary for 2021 and 2022, respectively.

They were also not in favour of the 6 percent and 8 percent rise in the national minimum wage for 2021 and 2022, respectively.

But Prof Adei implies that posture is petulant and that the President’s decision not to accept a pay rise ought to have served as a signal to all public sector workers that it is sacrifice time.

“The president has come out and yet, in Ghana, the good news is not good news. The president has said that all the increase which was recommended, he is not going to accept it; as well as his vice and his ministers, and you know, it was just a flash in the pan”, Prof Adei observed.

“He [president] gave the instruction right from the beginning and what he has done is that, still, automatically, the Controller and Accountant General paid it into his account so he was refunding it. But whatever it is, whether it is from the outcry [of Ghanaians] or not, if you are a leader, it’s a good example. It says that: ‘We are in difficulty and, therefore, I’m – whether he was prompted or reacting – going for zero’. Then the other people should know that their 4 percent is actually higher”, Prof Adei said.

Professor Adei who was placed at the GRA board to oversee the plugging of holes in revenue receipt by the tax agency had been widely regarded as a failure during his tenure heading the board of GRA.