GOVERNMENT RATING HIGH (Front page) 08-01-10

A cross-section of people and a number of recognised bodies in Accra yesterday scored high marks for the Mills administration in the areas of the economy, education and security after one year in office.
However, they conceded that a lot more needed to be done in the areas of consolidating peace, promoting business, providing infrastructure and improving the general conditions of workers.
A security analyst, Mr Emmanuel Bombande, noted that the first year of the Mills administration witnessed a remarkable improvement in the fight against violent crimes, but not in the search for peace, reports Kofi Yeboah.
In an interview, Mr Bombande stressed the need for the police and other security agencies to upscale their strategy in order to sustain the gains made and called for a more proactive approach to improve on peace interventions.
"Peace and security are mutually influential and are truly integrated, and yet, they are not the same thing," he remarked, as he shared some thoughts with the Daily Graphic on the performance of the Mills administration regarding national security in 2009.
Mr Bombande said although security could not be put in a time frame, there had been a remarkable improvement and progress in combating violent crime, such as armed robbery.
He said the achievement was due to the more proactive approach adopted by the police and the military, an improvement on their capacity for rapid deployment and the reward package instituted by the police, among other factors.
Although he admitted that there had been a few instances of violent crime of very disturbing proportions in the course of the year, he pointed out that, in terms of figures, those incidents were less than what pertained the previous year.
Mr Bombande, however, indicated that the issue was not just about statistics but the psychological barrier that made people to feel safe or unsafe.
He said the challenge was how to sustain the gains made and even improve on them to ensure that the incidents of violent crime were reduced to the barest minimum.
On peace, Mr Bombande observed that peacekeeping in the country had been reduced to the level of firefighting without any initiative to promote dialogue among the factions.
The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) feels that some achievements were made in the area of education, reports Emmanuel Bonney.
The association said the interventions such as the provision of free exercise books, free uniforms and the 50 per cent increase in the Capitation Grant from GH¢3 to GH¢4.50 pesewas, to attract and retain pupils in school were laudable.
A Deputy General Secretary of GNAT, Mr John Nyoagbe, told the Daily Graphic that the interventions by the government would help address inequality in the system.
He said such initiatives should not be a nine-day wonder but should be sustained, adding that the real targets of the interventions should be identified for them to derive maximum benefit.
"The increase in the Capitation Grant by 50 per cent is worthy of commendation. But the issue is the time of delivering the resource is the most important thing. If the Capitation Grant comes early enough then school heads would use it to plan and implement the programme, but if it comes in the middle of the term or towards the end, then one can now guess what the money would be used for," he said.
Mr Nyoagbe said teachers and their welfare issues especially teacher shortage and how to attract and retain teachers in deprived communities, needed to be given a very serious thought.
He said the 20 per cent allowance for teachers in rural areas announced by the government should not be a platform talk but must be translated into reality else the imbalance in education delivery would remain.
On the Government's decision to revert to the three-year senior high school education, he said once the government had decided to do that it should endeavour to motivate teachers and provide the needed facilities that would enhance teaching and learning.
On the health sector, a former Director-General (D-G) of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, said it was premature for any serious assessment to be done on a government’s performance within one year, reports Lucy Adoma Yeboah.
He went further to point out that it would be a bit easier if the health sector had had one minister to head the ministry for the year but not under the current situation where the ministry had two ministers within that short period.
Professor Akosa explained that if Dr George Sipah-Adjah Yankey who was first assigned the responsibility of the ministry had been given the opportunity to work for the whole year, one would have been in a better position to, at least, look at some of the policies he might have introduced.
He said unfortunately, Dr Yankey did not keep long at the Ministry of Health and also the new minister, Dr Benjamin Kunbour, had just taken over as the substantive sector minister and, therefore, no proper assessment could be done on that ministry.
Matilda Attram & Henrietta Brocke report that a section of the traders at the Agbogbloshie market raised concerns about the economy in the first year of the Mills administration, which came into office on January 7, 2009.
A provision shop owner, Mr Fred Addo, said although the economy had not been better than expected, it was manageable.
Comparing the National Democratic Congress (NDC) era to that of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he stated that the difference in the increase in fuel prices and goods was not that much.
“During NPP era a carton of milk was 16 cedis and now it is 20 cedis due to inflation,” he said.
He expressed the hope that Ghanaians would co-operate with the government to improve on the economy for the benefit of all.
For his part, the Executive Director at the Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA), Dr J. L. S. Abbey, urged the government to strive towards reducing its expenditure in order to close its deficit gap currently pegged at 10.5 per cent, reports Naa Lamiley Bentil.
Last year, the government envisaged a reduction of its deficit to 9.4 per cent but it was unable to achieve that target at the end of year 2009 and that, according to Dr Abbey, could be attributed to the backlog of expenditure in the year 2008 during the electioneering.
To reverse the trend however, and set the economic on a path of recovery, Dr Abbey stated that the government must remain focus and insist on value for money in its expenditure whilst ensuring that programmes and projects which had stalled were completed to the benefit of the people.
Infrastructure projects such as roads, for instance, must be built to facilitate economic activities.
According to him, 2009 was a very difficult year for even developed economies due to the global recession and described Ghana as “a tail of two cities”.
Explaining, Dr Abbey said Ghana was caught in between two forces, in that whilst developed nations increased their spending to stimulate the economy, Ghana’s government reduced spending significantly to stabilise its economy.
From the labour front, Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho reports that the Deputy Secretary General of the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC), Dr Yaw Baah, has commended the government for some bold initiatives that it had taken since it took office.
One of such initiative is the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), which, according to Dr Baah, would help bring relief to most workers especially teachers in terms of they getting fair wages which would be commensurate to their work.
He also commended the government for the implementation of the Three Tier Pension Scheme, which, according to him, would enable most workers to go on pension with some dignity.
Dr Yaw Baah, however, expressed some reservations including the existing high taxes which public service workers had to pay and the current employment situation in the country.