IMF conditions: Prez. Mahama denies workers retrenchment

President John Dramani Mahama has denied that as part of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditions for the bailout of the country, public sector workers would be retrenched.

He said the government is not doing wholesale employment but employing people to fill vacancies created as a result of pensions, resignation and deaths.

President Mahama was speaking at a national conference of Public Chief Directors, Chief Executives and Chairpersons of Governing Boards and Councils of the Public Sector Commission in Koforidua, on Friday.

He explained that, the position taken by government is to streamline the public sector and the wage bill and indicated that a staff rationalization is ongoing to ensure that, the requisite human resource base is spread throughout the sectors and across the country.

According to the President, the nation is moving towards a system where vacancies would be declared at the districts level so that there would be no staff over concentration in the urban areas to the detriment of the rural areas.

He said, there is the need to employ people for specific jobs and not add on to the number, to improve the public sector as well as government purse and not because IMF had spelt that as a condition to be satisfied.

President Mahama said the public sector must be reformed to reflect the state of a 21st-century leadership through consistent and concerted efforts to improve upon the public service delivery system.

-GNA