How will you detect challenges with the quality of advice to an institution? Look out for after-thought actions and for functionaries struggling to rightly position carts to horses already in motion.<\/p>\n
The President was recently put to the gravest test to choose between water and power and he chose the latter. Such is the life of a president always faced with hard choices that ordinary people can only dream about.<\/p>\n
There are however times when a President or his advisors can make a simple question hard. Like, in the instance of kicking the Ministry of Water Resources Works and Housing out of Cabinet.<\/p>\n
There was no justifiable reason for that yet this was what happened, and worse, treatment of the situation as a light matter.<\/p>\n
Split Up of Energy Ministry and Resulting Reverberations<\/strong><\/p>\n How did we get here? From Dumsor. However lets jump start the cause and effect chain to the decision to split up the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. There were whispers and insinuations at the time of the split \u2013 whether this was necessary at all, however many were those who thought we should \u201cforget about it since it\u2019s just one new addition to the bureaucratic expenditure lines\u201d.<\/p>\n If the water sector lobbyists had known about the possible repercussions of the decision they would have gone beyond whispers. I am inclined to believe that even the advisors of the President would not have gone this route if they had had foreknowledge about the emerging consequences except maybe they chose to ignore the negative impact in favour of some positives we are yet to see.<\/p>\n The first reverberation was felt in the near-breaching of a constitutional numerical limit on cabinet appointments. Some opposition MPs raised the red flag and Government responded with PR works to limit potential damages. The realization of this error led to the hard question being put to the President about who stays and who gets sent out of cabinet. Hard choice! Alas that was the road the President had been led.<\/p>\n Significance of Cabinet Seats for Ministries<\/strong><\/p>\n In the presidential system of Ghana, cabinet unlike in parliamentary systems does not share collective responsibility and therefore is an advisory organ which serves at the pleasure of the President. A cabinet position for a sector ministry within the context of Ghana depicts the level of importance attached to the ministry. Even if this is not the intent behind designations of cabinet and non-cabinet positions this is the signal that the public or more seriously actors within Government pick about a ministry.<\/p>\n The unwritten weighting of importance leads to a categorization of ministers into senior and junior grades, de facto. The position of ministers in the pecking order combined with their personal stature among others have a bearing on their ability to negotiate for resources for their sectors; as the distribution of state resources in reality is not guided by any clear order. Power and position therefore matters.<\/p>\n Power at times is backed by real strength of force or at times by ephemeral qualities which make it difficult to tell which is backed by force or by fancies until stripped. The prevailing notion is that cabinet ministries are the most significant and important and those that are not represented on cabinet are not. Whether real or fancy, cabinet ministers employ the influence that their positions provide in the scramble for resources for their respective sectors. The closer you are to the action the better you chances.<\/p>\n Consequence of Split and Dropping of Water Ministry from Cabinet<\/strong><\/p>\n Old-school public administration specialists or the minimalists as some will call them are often critical of big-step changes especially where no impact studies exist to provide indication of likely outcomes. Even the availability of such studies is deemed inadequate due to limitations of human knowledge and even of scientific tools to accurately account for all possible angles of impact. Big step changes are therefore like long strides taken into the dark. The foot can either be met by the ground or slip into a hole.<\/p>\n The question therefore arises, about – what was so compelling to warrant a split in the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum? Could a beefed-up power directorate within the ministry not have dealt with the situation? Maybe there was the need for strong and unfettered political leadership in the power sector to deal with the current electricity crises but as was the case the Ministry had two deputy ministers.<\/p>\n One could be assigned special oversight over power. Two deputy ministers were enough to attend to the three directorates under the Ministry. Less problematic and better than the creation of a new ministry, the President could have stretched from two deputies to three. Unless maybe the real problem was with the Energy Minister\u2019s capacity to contain the size of Dr. Kwebena Donkor as a deputy and a resolve of the appointer not sacrifice Dr. Donkor for an alternate deputy ministerial appointee to be in charge of power. The new parallel bureaucracy with its attendant costs and constraints could be avoided.<\/p>\n Ministry of Water Resources Works and Housing Should Please be Readmitted to Cabinet<\/strong><\/p>\n The importance of the water sector in addition to major outstanding challenges to be addressed for increased rural and urban water coverage makes it difficult to agree with the action of throwing the water ministry out of Cabinet. We exist now in a period with high possibility and potential for bridging gaps in access to water in the country. Lately we have seen remarkable effort by Government in the implementation of expansion works to increase water supply from 93 million gallons per day to 158.3 million gallons per day in the Accra Metropolis to solve access challenges in places like Adenta, Haatso, Agbogba and Madina.<\/p>\n There is also implementation of a 20000 boreholes project for rural communities currently in progress in all ten regions. These projects are yet to be completed, these projects form only a fraction of resources needed for universal access, more resources are required to quench the thirst of both urban and rural communities.<\/p>\n Successful completion, maintenance and addition to these require strong political leadership in the sector; a leadership clothed with the necessary weight and influence to requisition more resources for the water sector in the usual scramble amongst sectors.<\/p>\n Results of a strong and an efficient water sector will be to the benefit of citizens and a credit to Government. Sending the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing out of the cabinet is a bad signal and a big blow to expectations of the sector. The ministry should be recalled.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Leonard Shang-Quartey<\/p>\n The writer is a Policy Analyst with the Integrated Social Development Center (ISODEC).<\/p>\n Email: leonardshangquartey@yahoo.com<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How will you detect challenges with the quality of advice to an institution? Look out for after-thought actions and for functionaries struggling to rightly position carts to horses already in motion. The President was recently put to the gravest test to choose between water and power and he chose the latter. Such is the life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":18857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-95117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-akufo-addo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}