Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo has presented vehicles and motorbikes to selected entities under the Public Reform for Results Project (PSRRP) as part of efforts to resource them to work efficiently.

The twenty-five vehicles and twenty-three motorbikes, which were procured with the support of the World Bank, were given to the Births and Deaths Registry (BDR), Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation (MoME), Driver and Vehicular Licensing Authority (DVLA), and the Office of the Senior Minister (OSM).

In a statement before the presentation on Friday at the Forecourt of the State House, Accra, Yaw Osafo-Maafo said, “The office of the Senior Minister was poised to improve and support delivery of quality services to Ghanaians and will continue to work assiduously with the World Bank in this direction for sustainable results under the PSRRP.”

Mr. Osafo-Maafo observed that some reforms had taken place in Ghana with modest positive outcomes, informing that those initiatives were to make the public sector more responsive, efficient and effective in the delivery of services.

“The positive results of these mainly supply-driven reform initiatives were neither achieved nor sustained. Low capacity and inadequate resources, little follow-through to mobilize internal organizational resources to deliver the results were largely some of the challenges,” he indicated.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo said for the reforms of the public sector to be sustained, the then Public Sector Reform Secretariat (PSRS) was placed under the Office of the Senior Minister to deliver efficient, prompt, and valuable services promptly to citizens and the private sector.

The Senior Minister informed that public servants were a crucial resource and citizens and the private sector expected the public sector to be more responsive to their needs.

"How quickly public services are delivered, how citizens and firms can convert their needs into opportunities, and whether government, through the public sector is responsible to these needs, are key to increase economic growth of the country," he said.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo said the PSRRP became effective in 2019 and had been making strides by assisting sixteen selected entities to deliver quality services to citizens and firms.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo indicated, “It is our duty to ensure that these ministries do not become permanent feature of the system. The reforms ought to come to an end along the line such that the whole public and civil service would internalize the reforms and continue without any external stimuli and ensure that in both its human and material resources, the country can carry out its reforms without any external support.”

As part of making the public and civil sector more effective, the Senior Minister said, in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PSRRP through the World Bank procured equipment to various entities like the OSM and MoME to enable staff work remotely and be productive.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo added that procurement processes were underway to provide such equipment to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Ministry of Transport (MoT), Public Services Commission (PSC) and Office of the Head of Civil Service (OHCS).

The Birth and Death Registry (BDR) received ten pickups and 23 motorbikes, Drivers and Vehicular Licensing Authority (DVLA), six minibuses, Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation (MoME), four vehicles and Office of the Senior Minister (OSM) had five vehicles.