The Office of the Head of the Local Government Service (OHLGS) does not have plans to lay off some workers, the Head of the Service Dr Nana Ato Arthur, has allayed public fears.
According to him, reports in sections of the media, attributing the redundancy announcement to him were incorrect and misleading and should be disregarded.
“I have not said this anywhere. It is rather unfortunate. My director who represented me did not say that too,” he said at a press conference in Accra yesterday.
Dr Arthur reportedly made the disclosure in a speech read on his behalf at the 3rd National Conference of the Ghana National Association of Local Government service in Tamale on Friday.
According to the reports, he said, the decision to undertake the layoff exercise soon was because the local government sector was bloated with administrative safe.
Reacting to the publication, he said, the word “rationalise” in the speech which was misconstrued to mean lay off, was rather referring to fair posting of workers at the local levels.
That part of the speech read: “I must add that, in recent time, some concerns have reached management and the LGSC on the increased number of administrative Officers within the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs)/MMDAs which has affected the caliber of officers.
“The number of officers available far outweighs the work schedule assigned. As such, it literally becomes difficult to learn on the job as there is little or no work to be done.
“Management has taken major steps to address this menace and preparations are far advanced by the RCCs to rationalise staff to cut off excess in some MMDAs to make room for increased productivity.”
Dr Arthur explained that staff rationalisation was a human resource management tool for deploying staff to places where their services were most needed.
He said usual practice was that the Service posted workers toRCCs in all 16 regions nationwide for onward reposting to various offices in the MMDAs.
However, he said, it had been observed that the reposting had been skewed against the rural or less endowed areas because many workers preferred to stay in the cities.
To ensure that the rural areas received their fair share of staff to boost productivity, Dr Arthur said, the controversial part of his speech was to emphasise a directive given to the regional heads.
He said LGS met Regional directors a couple of weeks ago and directed them to redeploy staff in line with system and procedures designed by the public services.
Asked when the reposting would be done, he said, it should be by the end of the year to enable the staff prepare themselves adequately to start work next year.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR