The Director-General of the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), Naval Captain Rtd Kamal Deen Ali, has admitted to concerns that the institution is over staffed, a situation he argues is not peculiar to the Authority.
He however says the situation is not entirely bad because they are making good use of these unrequired staff profitably.
According to him, the Authority is embarking on expansion activities and these staff have come in handy for this purpose in the last one year that he has been in office.
Speaking at an event for selected editors on Thursday, April 16, the Director-General said it has been convenient for the GMA to fall on this staff. He said these staff members have been posted areas to curb sea and boat accidents.
“We have over staffing as a challenge and it is a public sector issue. Almost every state institution may be functionally overstaffed yet we still don’t have employment.
The good thing though is that with all the expansion we are doing, we are using the staff now. Because you can see, so far in the last one year, we have got almost getting to 10 satellite offices. Staff may not want to go, but you must go.
Somebody must be in Yeji, somebody must be in Saboba, somebody must be somewhere around Kaliba, otherwise we will have the accident”, he said.
He mentioned one of such useful projects as the about 10 satellite centres built across the country.
He said some of these staff have been dispatched to these areas aimed at reducing accidents.
Some of the new satellite centres include Akosombo in the Eastern Region, Saboba in the Northern Region, Kete Krachie in the Oti Region, and Kpando Torkor in the Volta Region.
Naval Captain Rtd Ali also touched on interesting story of how staff posted to these centres on rotation basis sometimes refuse to return to the headquarters in Accra.
Since his assumption of office, Kamal Deen Ali said there have times he had personal encounters with some of these staff, to come back to the headquarters after two years but they vehemently objected to the idea.
“So we are pushing the staff, but also we are assuring staff that we are not sending you to Saboba, I’m not saying Saboba is bad, but relatively smaller towns, we are not sending you to Wa, we are not sending you to Dambai or Kpando to be there forever. So we are putting in place rotational arrangement.
You are going there for two years or so, and somebody is going back. Although in my talks when I took office, I went to some of the places and I saw some of the staff who wanted to come back. So I went to Dambai and I said, you people who have been spending four years here, come back to the headquarters.
And some of them told me, no, no, sir, we don’t want to come, we want to be in Dambai. Because they’ve learned the life there is cool, it’s nice, you can save a lot of money living in Dambai and have the best of food. So yes, but we are trying as much as possible to make sure that we use the staff in an optimal way”.
By Gifty Boateng