Government pays civil servants to do private jobs – George Loh

The former Member of Parliament for North Dayi Constituency in the Volta Region, George Loh, has hit at public sector workers who transact private businesses instead of what they have been mandated to do in their various offices.

The member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) contended: “we only pay people to go and sit in the offices and they do their private things and go away but are paid at the end of the month by the government of Ghana”.

Mr. Loh, who is a lawyer by profession, was contributing to discussions on TV3’s New Day concerning the perennial flooding in parts of the country.

“The Town and Country Planning workers don’t do anything. All along, why are we paying people to be in the local government sector?” the former MP asked.

He added that “I think that we are going on in a cycle because this is not a novel. This is a country that we don’t want to do things differently and always when a disaster happens, what we hear is, my heart goes out to the bereaved family, NADMO will give out some items, the media will give less coverage, and that is all. What are the assemblies doing?”

Mr. Loh added, “one of the challenges we have in this country is that we have people we are paying, we have institutions we are spending on, but we are not interested to see the results they are providing”.

“NADMO is now a political organ which provides job for the boys…but is that what it should be for us looking at what is happening in the country? If there is a disaster, there should be mass mobilisation of people and where are they?”, the former MP wondered.

The Ashanti Regional Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Samuel Pyne, recognised the need for government to step in to save the situation. “It is our social responsibility to come in but we have agencies that have been mandated to handle some of these things”, he explained.

Sam Pyne called for training and education for the citizens to know how to handle disaster should there be any. “

We have been given some little training on some of these things. People there should be educated on how to confirm these issues”, he added.