Rebranding Public Service The Only Way To Be Productive

President Akufo-Addo has called for a complete change in the attitude of public officials in the country.

He said the lack of positive influence and enthusiasm in the country’s public service is greatly affecting the relevance of the service.

According to him, the negative habits in service delivery was not adding value to the country, and is slowing down development.

Akufo-Addo made the remarks in a speech read on his behalf by the Senior Minister Osafo Marfo at the 9th Annual Conference of Chairpersons of Governing Boards/ Councils, Chief Directors and Chief Executives of the Public Service held in the Eastern Regional capital, Koforidua.

Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo
The conference of chairpersons of governing boards/ councils was instituted in the year 2007 by the public services commission to provide a platform for top public servants to meet and exchange ideas on contemporary public service and public administration practices, with the view to reaching consensus on how to improve productivity, enhance performance, and maintain high standards of service delivery.

Speaking on the theme: “Change management, innovation, and creativity for value-added service delivery”, the president called for a complete rebranding of the public service.

“Our public service needs a new phase, those in the business of marketing of products will term it as rebranding. If the products are on the market for a long time, the marketers, the professionals you have a way of turning around and changing the labels and they talk about rebranding. We need to rebrand public service, It’s our interest to do so if we don’t, I can tell you that it will never be business as usual. There will be foul stages in the system because no government will continue to be viewed from the window that will make the government look bad.”

Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo
The senior minister, Osafo Marfo, further entreated the participants to network and also introduce ideas to each other during the conference to enable them to brainstorm and provide solutions for government and the public and not problems for public service.

“You all must at the end of this conference be richer in your individual and collective experiences, it is my expectation that the conference shall come out with a number of recommendations as the way forward to bring solutions and not problems”.

On his part, the Eastern Regional Minister, Eric Kwakye Darfour entreated his colleagues to embrace change with a new working attitude.

“Innovation is not always a new product or service but a new way of doing things differently for improved performance, quality assurance, cost-effectiveness etc. The good news is that everyone has the capacity to be innovative and I entreat you to step out of the *old ways of doing things and task yourself with new ways of addressing the challenges of the 21st century public service”.

“Change starts with the individual and until you believe in that change, you cannot enforce what you do not believe in. Let us therefore approach our work with creativity and innovative thinking and this would give us the expected outcomes, all this is hinged on attitudes,” he added