The Director-General of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), Edward Boateng has blamed the low productivity and performance in the public service on the lack of sanctions in the service.

The SIGA boss intimated that, unlike the private sector which sanctions people for low performance and productivity, same cannot be said for the public service which is often left unguarded without targets expected of staff.

Bemoaning the situation on Face to Face on Citi TV, Mr. Boateng said “there are no sanctions for non-delivery in Ghana and that is a problem. There are KPIs [key performance indicators] but people don’t enforce the KPIs and what we are doing now is to ensure that we enforce the government’s KPIs.”

He added that the government has adopted a new approach where workers in the public service sign a performance contract that is reviewed yearly to put low-performing state-owned enterprises and their staff in check.

He however acknowledged that “there are genuine problems that we have to consider, and we are working through them by instituting an award scheme to reward those who are doing well and also shame those who are not doing well.”

“Like the president said to us in Kwahu, he congratulated TDC [Tema Development Council] and the others at the top but also those who are at the bottom five are expected to move up,” he further stressed

He also disclosed that “the responsibility matrix we use is helping to push people who are put in charge SOEs to realize that they have to perform or the torch will be shone on them and so this is making people to move away from the kiosk mentality to a corporate mentality and we are making headways”.