Prez. Akufo-Addo begins performance review of Ministers

• Posted on February 12, 2018
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

President Nana Akufo-Addo will begin meeting his ministers one-on-one from Monday, to assess their performances.

The exercise will also review the overall performance of the government after one year in office.

Minister of State in charge Monitoring and Evaluation, Anthony Akoto Osei, who prepared the evaluation of the ministers for the President, says he will not be spared.

“I myself, I will be assessed…I am not over confident but I know I am doing my work right,” he said.

The overall performance of the ministers will determine their fate in an impending ministerial reshuffle.

Water Resources and Sanitation Minister, Kofi Adda, has come under criticism for what some say is his failure to deliver on his mandate to keep the city clean, however, is confident he will obtain a favourable assessment record.

“I hope that those same people who are asking for my head should be honourable enough to say Mr Adda has done a good job,” he said.

The President is expected to assess his Ministers on the targets he spelt out for them when they were first appointed.

Reshuffle

Rumours of a reshuffle started since December 2017 but have now crystallised in the corporate style appraisal process begins.

President Akufo-Addo with a taste for new governance style, outdoored his ministers during a televised session where he explained the reasons for his choice of each minister.

The minister will now explain to him why his choice was justified.

Joy News has learned the 110 ministers could be slashed to a “significantly lower” number.

The heaviest assemblage of an executive arm ever in Ghana’s history sparked sharp criticisms from wide sections of the public.

Some ministers were packed with four executive heads – a minister and three deputies.

The President has had to defend this record number several times, the latest being at the 2018 media encounter where he said he was happy with the numbers.

He also said the output of government over the past one year proved his army of ministers worth its size.

But with an expected slash it may be that the rhetoric of satisfaction is giving way to the unabated criticism this number of ministers still attract.

Only one deputy minister, Deputy Agriculture Minister William Quaitoo, has left the government after making comments which were deemed ethnocentric while the Upper West regional minister was suspended last week over political vigilantism in the region.

A social media campaign was waged for deputy Trades and Industry minister, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, to be sacked for comments deemed insulting while Carlos Ahenkorah, another deputy at Trades and Industry, engaged in a verbal assault on an NDC MP which sparked some muffled calls for his sack.

But perhaps the most widely criticised is the Sanitation minister, Joseph Kofi Adda, who is under intense social media pressure over filth in the cities.

Ghanaians spent Christmas rededicating their lives to God but also dedicated a lot of attention to Special Development minister Hawa Koomson after her 2018 budget showed she wanted to build a website for 800,000 cedis. It was later said the figure was an error and that it was 80,000 cedis instead.

Nonetheless, calls for her sack raged for weeks.

But it is the top-secret dossier of Dr. Anthony Osei Akoto that is expected to matter in this encounter with the president.

-Myjoyonline