10 things to change in Ghana

By: Kwaku A. Danso

1. Allow full local freedom and empowerment- to elect their town council and Mayors, and District and Regional Chief Executives, to design their own budgets, including property identification with street name and house numbering and NATIONAL ID NUMBER for every citizen and Resident or Taxpayer, to facilitate database creation and planning.

2. Allow better citizenship participation in our democracy- all elected officials should have open working phone, email and mail documentation systems to receive and record inputs from the public.

3. Ban Open Gutters and open defecation in Ghana, as a National law enforced by local governments and monitored by national officials.

4. Have all Ministries develop *performance monitoring indices* posted on their websites, eg-
- Ministry of Health - condition of health care facilities and services;
- ministry of roads & Highways- monitoring for poor road conditions across the country, etc

5. The President should have more open communication with the people, instead of through surrogates or communication experts

6. All Ministries and Agencies should have their experts answer public questions on problems or challenges, not PR offices. Example Chief Engineers of ECG and VRA and GRIDCO should answer questions.

7. Hold Chief executives of Public Agencies responsible for Defining Goals, Meeting schedules, Quality Performance and Service Delivery

8. Every Ministry and Public Agency must have Quarterly and Annual Public Reports and Meetings (as required of American corporations), and showing and justifying the service they deliver to the nation, and work towards improvement on performance matrixes.

9. All MPs, Ministers, Public Official Executives should be paid a flat salary and no vehicles or petrol. 1 or 2 vehicle per 100 employees of an Agency or Ministry may be sufficient and managed by the Executive secretary with a log of maintenance and records.

10. To revive Ghana's Economy, Government should

- reduce the cost of government through expense reduction to match revenue projections
- Reduce national borrowing interest rates by stopping to issue Government Bonds and CDs above 5%, and
- regulate Bank margins to 5%, this making borrowing in Ghana reasonable at or under 10%.
• In addition When cost of borrowing is drastically reduced, inflation rate will reduce and manufacturing stimulated.

Dr. Kwaku A. Danso, Mar.5, 2017

Author:
Leadership Concepts and the Role of Government in Africa: The Case of Ghana (Danso, Kwaku A., 2007, XLibris)
(Submitted on request to Dr. Suzanne Quartey- as a Spontaneous Q&A)