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Ghanaians Dissatisfied With Gov't

By Daily Guide
Business & Finance Ghanaians Dissatisfied With Gov't
NOV 14, 2014 LISTEN

A lady in search of water.
The latest Afrobarometer survey has revealed that Ghanaians are dissatisfied with government's delivery of public services.

Kweku Ofosu Debrah, Assistant Project Manager of Afrobarometer, Anglophone West Africa, who presented findings of the survey yesterday in Accra, said should government decide to increase its expenditure, Ghanaians would like to see investment in education and health.  'Afrobarometer findings on public service delivery are being released as the load-shedding exercise in the electricity sector worsens and the country comes out of the recent cholera outbreak in the midst of government's frantic efforts to protect the country from the deadly Ebola epidemic.'

The Afrobarometer team at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) interviewed 2,400 adult Ghanaians from May 24 to June 10, 2014.

A sample of this size yields results with a margin of error of +/- 2% at a 95 percent confidence level.

Most Ghanaians said government performed 'very badly' or 'fairly badly' in providing reliable electricity (75 percent), maintaining roads and bridges (68 percent), providing water and sanitation services (66 percent), addressing educational needs (63 percent) and improving basic health services (61 percent).

Compared to previous Afrobarometer surveys, the public's negative evaluation of government's performance in delivering these services has increased significantly, ranging from 28 percentage points (water and sanitation) to 59 percentage points (reliable electricity).

The priority of Ghanaians for potential increase in public spending are education (cited by 47 percent of respondents) and health care (29 percent).

Forty-five percent of Ghanaians are opposed to increases in taxes or user fees in exchange for increased government expenditure in the health sector.

Afrobarometer is an African-led, non-partisan research network that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions and related issues across more than 30 countries in Africa.

Five rounds of surveys were conducted between 1999 and 2013, and Round 6 surveys are currently under way (2014-2015).

Afrobarometer conducts face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent's choice with national representative samples of between 1,200 and 2,400 respondents.

Previous surveys were conducted in Ghana in 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2012.

By Samuel Boadi
 
 

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