Independent presidential hopeful, Dr. Sam Ankrah, has unveiled his commitment to revolutionize government operations, presenting a bold plan to limit the number of ministers to 20 if elected as president.
In an interview, Dr. Ankrah delved into his vision for a more streamlined, efficient, and cost-effective administration.
“This is how we are going to run this administration. We are talking about only 20 ministers, no regional ministers,” he stated.
Dr. Ankrah emphasized the critical need to decentralize political power, asserting that the current political landscape fails to resonate at the grassroots level.
In line with this, he proposed the election of District Chief Executives (DCEs) to ensure a more accountable and responsive governance structure.
“We will make sure DCEs are elected. The intent is to ensure that politics is felt at the grassroots because, at the moment, it is not, and people are not benefiting. So, we want to make sure that the DCEs would run their districts under a local government and rural development ministry, which will oversee all the DCEs across the nation, excluding regional ministers. We are looking for only 20 solid ministers to run this nation,” he outlined.
Addressing concerns about the size of the government budget, Dr. Ankrah stressed the imperative of sustainability and efficiency in public expenditures.
He expressed reservations about the current government budget, drawing comparisons with the UK, which, despite having a larger population, maintains a significantly smaller payroll.
“Our current government budget is huge and not sustainable. The UK, with a population of about 65 million, has only about 350,000 people on their payroll. Ghana with only 31 million has over 1 million people on our payroll and the shenanigans of sitting allowances, per diems, Land Cruisers and all these things are huge and not sustainable.”
“We need to cut the government size drastically and we intend to do so, minimum by 50% and other programmes that when we get there we will talk about,” he added.