Government should have retrenched 15% of workers at height of COVID-19 – Kusi-Boafo

Thomas Kusi-Boafo, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Public Sector Reforms Secretariat, has disclosed that the government saved all public sector jobs at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when all signs pointed to the need to retrench some workers.

According to him, even though the economy was not all that good at the time the pandemic hit, COVID-19

Read full articledealt a further blow to the economy.

He stated in an interview on Accra-based Okay FM that 15% of public sector workers were retained and duly received all payments at a time the private sector was either cutting jobs or salaries.

“Ghana needed to retrench 15% of workers at height of the pandemic. That 15% would have given us the (fiscal) relief but the government agreed to let them stay on and to be paid.

“Many companies reduced salaries by 25% but who in government was impacted in terms of salaries or pensions?” he asked before adding that President Akufo-Addo has shown great commitment in seeing to it that the economy rebounds as quickly as possible.

“Whoever says it is not COVID that has devastated the entire global economy, excuse me to say, they need a psychiatric examination,” he added.

Whereas government insists the pandemic and its effects was largely to blame for the economic woes being experienced, the opposition says the government is using the pandemic as an excuse to cover up its horrible economic management.

The World Bank Country Director, Pierre Laporte, recently disclosed that even pre-pandemic, the Ghanaian economy was not strong and that it is in a dire state, a situation government and other stakeholders have admitted.