No Political Dismissals From Civil Service - Prez
President John Atta Mills has given the assurance that the government will not cause the dismissal of civil servants simply on account of their political affiliation.
The President said no one would be relieved of his or her responsibility in the Civil Service unless the person breached the rules and regulations which governed the conduct and behaviour of personnel of the service.
The Presidential Spokesperson, Mr Mahama Ayariga, conveyed the thoughts of the President on a number of issues at a news conference at the Castle, Osu, yesterday.
He reiterated the President’s commitment to the principle of fairness to all Ghanaians and said the government would not dismiss civil servants on the basis of their political leanings.
President Mills, according to the presidential spokesperson, would want to remind Ghanaians that the appointment of civil servants was not political but rather based on certain technical considerations.
He said the President was of the view that since the Civil Service had structures for the recruitment and appointment of its personnel, the ruling government could not, under any circumstance, remove them from their posts at will.
Commenting on recent developments pertaining to the distribution of political positions within the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Ayariga said it was the candid opinion of President Mills that the government had ensured equity in the sharing of posts to party activists across the regions.
“The government has ensured regional equity in the sharing of ministerial posts and we are all challenged to look at the data on regional distribution of ministerial appointments and we will observe that President Mills’s record is unsurpassed,” he said.
He further explained that the President was strongly convinced that the current government had the highest number of appointments made directly from the party since the dawn of the Fourth Republic.
“Even the NDC administration which managed the country between 1992 and 2000 never witnessed such a massive scale of party officials directly taking up government appointments,” the presidential spokesperson said.
He said the Chairman of the NDC, Dr Kwabena Adjei, is the Chairman of the Board of the GETFund and also sat in Cabinet, while the Vice-Chairman, Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, was also the Chairman of BOST.
Mr Ayariga gave a catalogue of national executives who had been appointed to ministerial and or deputy ministerial positions.
They are the National Women’s Organiser of the NDC, Mrs Ama Benyiwa Doe, who is currently the Central Regional Minister; the National Organiser, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, Eastern Regional Minister, and the National Youth Organiser, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications.
The rest are the two Deputy General secretaries, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah and Alhaji Baba Jamal, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development and Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, respectively; the Propaganda Secretary, Mr Fifi Kwetey, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, and the National Treasurer, Mrs Margaret Clarke Kwesie, Ghana’s Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea.
He further contended that none of the core members of the Professor Mills campaign team in the 2008 campaign, including himself, Nii Lamptey and Koku Anyidoho, took up ministerial appointments.
In the case of cadres, Mr Ayariga said the President had appointed Mr Sam Gariba as the Administrator of the GETFund; Mr Kofi Kportufe, the National Co-ordinator of NADMO, and Dr Ben Kunbuor, Minister of Health.