Mahama unhappy with last-minute recruitments by outgoing govt

 

President-elect John Dramani Mahama has expressed concern about last-minute payments of contract sums and massive recruitments into state agencies by the outgoing administration.

He noted that he had directed his side of the Presidential Transition Team to take up the matter.

President-elect Mahama said this when Madam Harriet Thompson, the British High Commissioner to Ghana, paid a courtesy call on him in Accra, to congratulate him on his victory in the December 7 polls.

He said there were a few signals that had been raised at the sitting of the Presidential Transition Team in respect of some contracts that some government agencies were trying to sign off at the last-minute, which would commit the new government even before it does come into office.

He said this was something that they had raised a signal about and that it was hoped that the Joint Transition Team would take a look at it and deal with it.

“There are also reports of last-minute mass recruitments into other agencies which would be a liability on the new government, and so, that’s something we’ve asked them to take up at the Transitional Team meeting and see how we can deal with those issues and otherwise,” President-elect Mahama said.

He said that his new administration upon assumption of office would be happy to begin some multilateral and bilateral discussions on the economic cooperation between Ghana and her international partners.

The President-elect noted further that the United Kingdom (UK) was particularly a historic partner to Ghana in terms of their joint history and so they would be happy to look at what the cooperation was.

He said his administration’s priorities were restoring economic stability, which was absolutely the first priority and the second was restoring economic growth and creating more job opportunities for young people.

“We do have some emergencies we need to deal with and that is the energy sector. It’s the actual scheme of the whole economic recovery effort,” he said.

“If we do not do something about the energy sector it could crash everything that we’re doing; so as quickly as possible we want to look at whatever assistance we can get in looking at the whole energy value chain and making sure we have a more sustainable energy sector going forward.”

The President-elect said whatever their partners could do to be of assistance both in terms of technical cooperation and in terms of resource mobilization, he thinks it was something they would like to look at; saying “aside from that I think so far so good”.

The President-elect said the cooperation they were expecting was one of something growing.

He thanked the UK for the support and cooperation before, during and after the 2024 general election, which ended successfully.

On her part, Madam Harriet Thompson, lauded Dr Mahamudu Bawumia for conceding to President-elect Mahama and the conciliatory tone of the latter’s response to his concession as well.

The High Commissioner further reiterated the UK government’s commitment to supporting the incoming Mahama administration through its tenure; stating that the relationship between the UK and Ghana was an important one.