Before I delve into the issue I want us to have a discourse about, let me render an apology to former President Limann family for predicting that we are going to have a bad Mahama administration like Limann government of 1979 to 1981. I made a mistake. Mahama is worse than I ever thought he will be. At least Limann was a well educated man and not corrupt. Now the issue at hand.

"President John Dramani Mahama says Ghana would soon come out of the socio-economic turbulence it is currently experiencing.He said: “developed countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany all went through both political and economic turbulence, but with perseverance, they have all succeeded. President Mahama said this when he joined the Star of the Sea Catholic Church to thank God for his victory in the 2012 election petition case at the Supreme Court a couple of months ago."

Ghanaians have seen through the crystal ball of the president's communications strategy to use God, churches and prayers to divert attention from the difficult economic circumstances of the country. This strategy will not work and nothing of such nature will be able to divert attention from the fact that this government have not been impressive, have not delivered on its promises and the people are suffering from serious economic mismanagement.

Mahama's strategy of hiding his inefficiencies by making childish inexcusable comparisons is not fooling majority of Ghanaians who are in tune with the enormous economic problems facing the country and instead of the President sitting down with his Economic team and coming up with workable solutions instead has turned this into auspicating at Churches. Mahama has this self-delusion of being a better communicator which most times gets him in trouble because he comes across in his effusions as being ill-informed and illogocal. He should stop promising better times ahead and act now. We should subject Mahama into analysand to ensure if he is a Presidential material at this time when the country is on the precipice of falling into an economic abyss. Mahama's illogical comparison of Ghana to countries like USA, Germany, UK and Japan shows that he has no clue of the problems Ghana is in at the moment.

Sad he is comparing Ghana, still an agrarian economy, not even an industrial economy let alone a technological economies these countries are. These countries did not sit on their asses or tax their citizens to suicidal situations to get out of this mess. Ghana's situation is unique in the sense that, we got ourselves in this mess by the stupidity of the SSSS policy which consumes 75% of government revenue thus leaving the government virtually nothing to undertake developmental projects after 15 to 20% interest payment on government loans. Mahama and his kakistocracy Ndc administration needs to trim the the expenses on wages and government workers will not accept pay reduction so what option he has is to reduce government Employees from the current 500,000 strong to about 250,000. Does he has the cojones to reduce the number of government workers from the President's office all the way to eliminating some Ministries like Information, Chieftancy, Telecommunication and others?

When United States of America recently went through econopmic turbulence, it did not impose taxes on its people to get out of the economic mess but rather it infused the economy with government funds more than half a trillion dollars in infrastruture projects like bridges repair and extention of unemployment benefits which is non-existant in Ghana. United States government can also print dollars to a certain level to ease its domestic economic problems which the government of Ghana cannot do without sending inflation through the roof so comparing Ghana's problems to these countries whose currencies are internationally accepted is in the wrong direction.

Ghana at the moment is like a patient in intensive care unit whose leg needs to be amputated but is refusing to accept Doctors advice and instead craving for pain medicine and bandages to postpone an eventuality which is bound to happen or he or she dies. Ghana needs to make these hard choices or the country will go HIPC again.

As I said earlier, Ghana's problem is due to the government wage bill of 75% of its revenue which needs to be addressed first before anything can be done. How can the government operate without funds to undertake developmental projects is beyound me and with the wage bill of 75% and interest on government loans of about 20% of the budget, the government is left with nothing to undertake any new projects or continue with old ones. Let's look at one typical example of how this government has lost its way. Managing Ghana is like managing any business just on a large scale. There is no business in the world that can survive with workers salaries consuming 75% expenditure of that business before raw materials is even accounted for. The reality is that, before Mills/Mahama, government was spending 25% on government workers salaries and that is why the NPP administration of President Kuffour was able to achieve its economic goals. Despite Mahama's workers pay increase, the workers are not better off than they were in 2008 because increase in utility bills and that services have eliminated any gains by workers.

It was reported in this forum a couple of weeks ago that, a Research department at the Forestry department has workers wages pegged at 1.6 million dollars whilst Research budget at the same department is a token sixteen thousand dollars($16,000). If this is not madness, then I don't know what madness is. This is like paying people to sit and do nothing because there is no way more than 100 people can have work to do with a mere $16,000 budget for a year.

It has now been reported that, the so called three wise men appointed by this administration to implement government special projects will have a tough time implementing their projects due to the current precarious nature of the economy.There are serious concerns that the projects, which include 200 community senior high schools (SHS) and a university in the Eastern Region, construction of a new international airport, the expansion of domestic airport and the construction of railways and roads, Regional hospitals, clinics and heal; the centers, could face massive implementation challenges due to the dire sate of the economy.

How can the government get out of this economic mess? First the government workers wages which used to constitute only 25% of the government budget revenue needs to come back to that level and the only way to do that is either reducing the workers pay or reducing the number of government workers.

Reducing workers wages is not an option now so the government has to reduce the number of government workers starting from the Flagstaff house where we have more workers than we need. The so called special Ministers at the Presidential office and their stafff needs to be rendered redundant. The three Wise men are not needed as their assignments can be taken by the various ministries.

Secondary, if the country is serious in addressing its problems, the number of Parliamentarians and Ministries should be reduced. Ghana does not need 275 Parliamentarians and more than 25 Ministries to operate efficientl. I know in order to address this problem calls for constitutional modifications and that is what we should do. We should not have more than one hundred and fifty Parliamentarians and fifteen Ministries.

Third, the government should abandon the colonial mentality of providing free housing and utility benefits to these Ministers and Parliamentarians who earn more than an average Ghanaian worker to take care of their own needs.

Fourth, government should stop this slave mentality of all government officials to live in Accra especially Parliamentarians who should live in their various constituencies to know what transpires in their various localities and only commute to Accra when Parliament is in session. All Congressmen don't live in Washington D.C neither do all Parliamentarians in Britain live in London.

Fifth, a population of twenty five million(25 million) should not have five hundred government workers. We should cut the government workforce in half, that is we should not have more than two hundred and fifty thousand(250,000) government workers. EEvery Ministry should be required toreduce its workforce in half except Teachers, Nurses and Health Care workers and the Police. The Army should reduce its personnel by 20%.

Sixth, the Ministers and their Deputies, Parliamentarians and the Judges who got more than 100% increase retroactively should revert to their previous pay scale.

Seven, the government should put a moratorium on accessing loans to reduce interest on government loans. Since the inception of this administration in 2009, government has borrowed close to twenty billion dollars without any visible sign of how this money has been used since the lives of Ghanaians have retrogressed since then. Most of the money borrowed has been used to pay workers and the usual stealing by government officials have accounted for the massive loans.

Eight, government should start prosecuting all officials who have been caught stealing the peoples money, eg, GYEEDA and SADA comes to mind.

Nine, there should be no Ministry with two deputies and all Regional Ministers should not have any deputy as we have District Chief Executives to act for these Ministers when they cannot attend functions.

Ten, we should reduce government entourage travelling abroad. Recently, Maham took more than twenty officials to United States on the UN assignment and spent more than two weeks there. The government now uses such official assignments as tourists escapades as we saw Maham standing infront of the huge CNN logo smilling from ear to ear like a child in a candy store or a befuddled tourist at Sea world.

Readers can come up with more solutions to help mother Ghana come out of this economic mess we are in. Most of what I have suggested are hard choices and we voted for this government to make hard choices to make our economy better and not the mantra it used to deceive the people to get elected, "ebe dii bi k3k3". Seems to me the mostly non Akan voters who voted for NDC did not understand the meaning of "ebe dii bi k3k3". This government has lived to this mantra which means, WE ARE HERE JUST TO SPEND YOUR MONEY.

Justice Sarpong

(CARDINAL of TRUTH)