Dr Rashid Pelpuo, the Employment and Labour Relations Minister, has revealed that ministers serving under President John Mahama’s administration, including himself, have not been paid for nine months.
According to Dr Rashid Pelpuo, the delay is part of a broader problem with the government’s new payroll system.
He revealed that the system is in a renewal stage aimed at avoiding future payment challenges.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, Dr Rashid Pelpuo explained, “It’s the overall system of renewal so that you don’t run into a problem eventually that we are trying to solve”.
“It’s not about the fact that the money is not there right now, but it’s about the fact that you want to do it alongside all the others they are complaining about, so that we just have a completely addressed system.”
Dr Rashid Pelpuo further touched on the Coalition of Unpaid Nurses and Midwives staged a protest in Accra to demand payment.
He added, “Yeah, there’s a problem. And if we can resolve ours, and newly employed nurses and teachers cannot resolve theirs, then there’s a problem. So it has to be done holistically, so everybody can be paid.”
“But those who are members of parliament and non-ministers, the parliamentary system has been taking care of them. The parliamentary system is okay, it’s properly done and operational”.
Dr Rashid Pelpuo further accused the Akufo-Addo government of burdening the Mahama government with 12,000 newly recruited public sector workers before exiting office.
The Laobur minister further detailed, “This tells the story of what complaints we had when we assumed office. At the point of exit of the NPP government, they imposed on us 12,000 new workers that they did not prepare to pay. They didn’t have the money to pay them, but they employed them. And then they exited.
The three-month budgets which they had to prepare for, as we take over, didn’t take into consideration any of these. And so we came into office with no preparations to pay anybody.
All the people they had just newly employed did not have enough clearance, but they imposed them on the government, and then they left”.
He further recalled a similar situation in the past under President J.A. Kufuor when he was leaving office.
Dr Rashid Pelpuo added, “Remember when President J.A. Kufuor was leaving, what was imposed on us was the Single Spine Salary Structure, which Atta Mills had to struggle with. So it’s like their DNA to give the incoming government a problem — let them fail, and let the people say that they have failed.
“It’s not a good thing for us to be doing. Once your point of existence as a government comes to an end, go. The people had already rejected you. There’s nothing you can do to bring yourself back to power. You can’t recreate a future which has been lost.”
“We are working towards ending this problem of unpaid workers. We acknowledge the fact that young people need to start life and be comfortable working for what they have been employed to do.
So we are doing everything to make it possible that we solve this problem, maybe before the end of the year.”