Ms Lydia Lamisi Akanvariba, the Minister of State-designate, Public-Sector Reforms, has called for a dialogue on the hiring and recruitment of individuals into the public sector.
The dialogue was necessary to prevent favoritism and political interferences in recruitment, which had seen some unqualified persons being employed, she said.
She made the comments during her vetting by the Appointments Committee in Parliament on Monday.
Her comments were in response to questions relating to the recent government directive on revocation of all appointments and recruitments into the public services after December 7, 2024.
It would be recalled that Mr Julius Debrah, Chief of Staff, who issued the directives on February 12, said the move was consistent with the government’s stance on near-end-of-tenure appointments and recruitments, deemed non-compliant with established good governance.
In her response, Madam Akanvariba noted that although she would not be happy to see people rendered ‘unemployed’ based on those revocation exercises, she would not be sad if such employments were not gained through the right processes.
“Let’s have a national dialogue on how we hire and recruit people into the public sector… Yes, I am a mother; a mother feels sad when her children have not eaten and are crying…”, she said.
“There are people we have employed that are not supposed to be employed…If I was employed in a way that I was not supposed to, … that amounts to corruption and unaccountability,” she told the Committee.
Aside from the proposal of a dialogue, the nominee agreed with the Committee that such recruitments and appointments could be avoided “if there were people with integrity and diligence in the public sector” because recruitments would have been done on merit bases.
She said she would organise training to strengthen the public sector in order to streamline the way people got hired.