998 Staffers: ‘Akufo-Addo officialising waste’ - Franklin Cudjoe

President of policy think tank, Imani Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has said the number of presidential staffers presented to parliament by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo makes his predecessor John Mahama seem like a frugal saint.

A list of 998 persons was submitted to parliament by the president in accordance with the Presidential Office Act as people who work at the presidency.

Comparison between the lists presented by Mr Mahama and that of Nana Akufo-Addo shows an increase of about 300 personnel.

Speaking on Accra-based Citi FM, Mr Cudjoe said government is rationalising waste.

”When Mahama was in office between 2012 and 2016, the budget that the office of government machinery was receiving was actually quite high, but when Mahama was leaving office in 2016, he had spent almost a billion Ghana cedis and he overrun that budget by GHS50 million Ghana Cedis.

“In some years in 2012 and 2013, Mahama overrun his budget by, in some regard, GHS200 million and GHS99 million. Now when the NPP came into office in 2017, they ballooned that figure to GHS1.5billion, but as we speak, we don’t know what was the overrun in 2017”.

“In 2018 they have allocated GHS3 billion and that’s GHS2 billion more than Mahama had to the office of government machinery and there’s nothing sensible about this arrangement and it’s always making Mahama look like a saint.”

Mr Cudjoe also stated that: “Corruption is not only about stealing money and putting your hands in the kitty, it’s also officialising waste. This is a clear example of officialising waste and we need to speak out about this…”