A lot of Ghana's 600,000 public sector workers must be retrenched and sent into farming, founding president of policy think tank IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe has suggested.

Mr Cudjoe told Prince Minkah, host of Class91.3fm’s Executive Breakfast Show on Thursday May 5 that there were too many superfluous people in the public sector that need to be shed off to pave the way for efficiency.

He identified the situation as one of the banes of the sector comparative to the private sector.

In the public sector, he said, “People have security of tenure, theirs is the issue of principles of anonymity, so, people like to fool around.”

“I mean I wish I were running one of these sectors, I don’t think anybody will like to work with me…actually retrench a bit, let people go into agriculture because agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, a lot more people should be retrenched and go into agriculture right now, they should go to ADB, get loans, I mean it’s one of my plans, assuming I was running for president, I’m going to retrench a lot of the public sector workers and give them tools to go into agriculture,” Mr Cudjoe said.

He said re-evaluation and retrenchment of staff in the public sector could do the country a lot of good, adding that there must be benchmarks set for public sector workers to ensure they live up to expectation.