Senior Minister Blew Ghc7.4milliuon On SUVs in 2019 …Bright Simons

Vice-president, in charge of research at IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, Bright Simons, has revealed that the Akufo-Addo government in 2019 used a reform program it had packaged for Ghana’s Civil Service to splurge on luxury vehicles for the office of the dented Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo.

In a series of Tweets that have since ignited heated discussions, Mr. Simons reveals the Office of Senior Minister had blown a whopping Ghc7.4million on Sports Utility Vehicles supposedly for the reform program.

“In 2018, the Office of the Senior Minister went to the World Bank with a briefcase full of ideas for this project to transform the public sector. Since then, the biggest completed expenditure was in December 2019, 7.4 million Ghana Cedis. What for? SUV cars,” he asks in a tweet.

“The Public Sector Reform programs under the Senior Minister/SPA that are supposed to make Ghanaian public servants as efficient as those in Singapore … Are cars the trick to fixing government?”

It is not clear how many SUVs were bought and of what automobile marques they were, but a good idea about SUVs is the fact that they include luxury brands such as Range Rovers and Porsche Cayenne.

The Akufo-Addo government has proven to be especially wasteful; being the government that has received more revenue from Ghana’s oil and borrowed more than all previous governments combined, and yet has very little infrastructure and social programs to show for.

Also, the government’s appetite for borrowing has landed Ghana into a debt quagmire that many think has put the country’s economy on a dangerous precipice.

It was against this backdrop that a move by the government to tax the savings of Ghanaians through an electronic transfer levy called e-levy is being fiercely resisted.

The government in 2018 began the implementation of the Public Sector Reform for Results Project (PSRRP) with funding from the World Bank to help improve service delivery of 16 selected Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).

The PSRRP formed part of the National Public Sector Reform Strategy (NPSRS) and was under the supervision of the Office of the Senior Minister.