Donor funded consultancy services to be reviewed

The Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama said Government would review the use of donor funds for expensive consultancy services to ensure efficient use of scarce resources in public sector management training.

Government would also check the proliferation of departmental training institutions to develop public management training policy.

These were contained in a speech read on his behalf, by Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, Minister for Presidential Affairs and Chief of Staff at the launch of the 40th anniversary of a 10-billion cedi Excellence Endowment Fund, for the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) at Greenhill, near Achimota.

Activities for the anniversary include a sod-cutting ceremony for the GIMPA Exchange Centre and a fund raising dinner dance.

The theme for the celebration is " Enhancing Management Capacity for Effective Leadership and Good Governance".

Alhaji Mahama said GIMPA, one of the few institutions under the Presidency, is of strategic importance to the Government for capacity building at the highest echelon of the Ghanaian society.

He said government would properly resource the institute to provide services required of it to move the country out of poverty into sustainable development.

Alhaji Mahama said the country's development crisis has led to deteriorating terms of trade, budget deficits and increasing balance of payment deficits.

"It has also reduced the tempo of activities in the public sector, caused production declines in the private sector, swollen the ranks of the unemployed and denied large sections of our people access to food and essential social services."

The Vice-President said several attempts initiated by the Government to promote efficiency and productivity in the economy require competent leaders with excellent skills to effectively implement policies at all levels and sectors, saying " critical task of building this capacity lies with institutions such as GIMPA".

He said managerial incompetence has contributed to the inability of most top executives to detect crimes and corruption adding that, "while corruption is totally unacceptable, non performance of duty arising either out of ignorance, incapacity or lack of training is equally bad."

He commended GIMPA for her role in managerial knowledge and skill development and urged government agencies to use their facilities to save the government a whopping sum of 75 per cent of training budgets that go to pay for facilities rather than on training.

Alhaji Mahama said even though GIMPA operates without government subvention, it will remain national in character, if it goes into commercialisation.

He said Government is seriously studying the GIMPA Commercialisation Report, and when concluded, the Government would put in place a new governing body to reflect the new status.

He urged GIMPA to introduce programmes that would expose senior officials to long term development objectives and integrate training in management techniques that would ethically re-orient them.

Alhaji Mahama called for development and expansion of the Distance Learning Centre to link Accra and the regional capitals since the centre can hold a video conference with Washington, it cannot not at the moment be in touch with Accra and the other regional centres.

Dr. Stephen Adei, Director of GIMPA said organisations have to stress on excellence and become role models for others to emulate.

He said GIMPA spends 60 million cedis a month against a monthly subvention of 41 million cedis to cater for its re-deployed workers following the commercialisation exercise and called on the National Oversight Committee to expeditiously decide on the. Re-deployed.

Other areas of concern to the institute, Dr. Adei said, are how to attract additional qualified faculty to replace the aged and adequately remunerate the staff.

The GIMPA Director called for additional classroom facilities, have an executive centre and additional 100 living rooms, and vehicles and a digital library with 50 computers.

Dr. Adei said the institute was poised to open up its executive masters programme to foreign participants and use its current capacity to offer afternoon and evening programmes to the youth who need tertiary education adding that, the tutorial college would become fully operational next year.

In a goodwill message, Mr Alfred Salia Fawundu, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative, pledged his support for the institute.