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Mr. Kwabena Otu, TUC:
Dr Mahama, about the golden age of increased productivity and
the wage situation in Ghana. How do you intend to address the
low wages in Ghana if indeed you are serious about the golden
age of increased productivity
Dr. Mahama:
Running a government is like running any company, except that
the social face of the government should be more visible than the
capitalist intent. So we have thought about cutting down the size
of government. Hopefully, that will lead to some money being
freed to improve the salaries of those who are there. We have also
thought about increased productivity in the agricultural sector. If
a worker's salary is one million cedis a month and transportation is
about 20% of that; if we have increased food production, he can
spend less on food. He will now feel that he has some disposable
income in his pocket; he will now feel more motivated by his job.
So it is multi-faceted approach that we are going to take. We will
help farmers to increase food production. That means that all other
sectors will get the benefit of it and then we can move it forward.
I am glad to say there are some people in this room who have been
part of the review of the salary structure in this country. The NDC
had their programme and the NPP has their programme; we will
put both of them together and give it to Ghanaians and I am sure
that we will do something about it.
Concluding remarks:
I would like to thank everybody for listening to me. I have said that
our campaign is based on the theme "Real Change, Real Hope".
We believe sincerely that it takes a change in the attitude of
government itself beginning with the President. It takes an attitude
of change to move us from where we are with all the resources that
everybody in this country knows we have, including the human
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resource. The question is what is lacking What is lacking is this
mental dependency that we have. If we don't run to Europe we
can't have anything done.
And this mental dependency is something that I don't have and I
will not have and I will lead the Government not to have it. I talked
to it a person from the Bank of Ghana and I actually hammered on
how much money we are getting and the person said I get amazed
because we know how much money we are bringing into the
nation but I can't see what we do with that money.
So even the people who are counting the money know that we are
getting a lot of money. At the end of the day how we spend it
determines what we get from it. Those are areas that I know we
make a difference. Some of the people who advised Operation
Feed Yourself are still alive. And I can't stop talking about
Operation Feed Yourself because it taught me one thing; I was
already a doctor but I took advantage of that government
programme to give myself a scholarship to go abroad. So I know
that if government programmes are targeted, but not limited to
certain sectors of the community or the nation, other people will
take advantage of them.
What we need is to have programmes designed to meet national,
and not partisan, needs. That is why I think the NDC and NPP
antagonism has retarded the growth of Ghana. PNC should be
given the chance and you will see. After all the people in Volta
Region say that you cannot balance a cooking pot (all of you know
how the cooking pot looks like) on two stones; we need three
stones. So when you have put that third stone there, that is PNC,
the pot of Ghana will be balanced well and we will cook the food
that we like.
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