Performance contract with government-subvented agencies - Where is the commitment of the government?

A performance contract is a legal binding agreement between the employer and the employee in terms of performance expectations from both parties.

It is a legal agreement since the employer can rely on it to take actions against the employee in the event the employee fails to honour his or her side of the agreement.  

Many countries such as France and Kenya have succeeded in making the public sector competitive and efficient through this concept of performance contract.  The question is, are there any lessons we can learn from them to make ours work? Coming from a tertiary institution, I will focus on tertiary institutions’ preparedness to sign the performance contract with the government.

Just like Ghana, almost all the tertiary institutions operate on a deficit budget which means their internally generated funds are not enough to take care of their expenses.  If that is the case, then the issue of infrastructure, necessary equipment and logistics becomes a big challenge for tertiary institutions to deliver on their mandate.

It must be noted that public sector employee engagement is a contract of service and if the employer cannot provide all the necessary equipment and logistics needed to perform according to the employer expectations, then the issue of accountability cannot be raised.  This is based on the premise that the responsibility for performance contract to work is a two way affair from both parties of the employer and the employee.  

What was the last time the government fully fulfilled its obligation of ‘Get Fund’ to tertiary institutions, especially polytechnics now technical universities for infrastructural development?  Again, look at the human resource gaps of most tertiary institutions. Making the public sector competitive and efficient calls for manpower with requisite skills and knowledge, and how can this be possible with governments decision to subdue the full set of skills, knowledge and abilities required by the public sector with embargo on public sector employment especially the tertiary institutions?

The government of Ghana is eager to sign a performance contract with the second batch of selected agencies but the question is how efficient are the first batch of the state agencies that signed the performance contract with the government some years ago.  For example, how is Accra Polytechnic, now a technical university, that signed the performance contract different from the other technical universities that are about to sign this performance contract with the government?  

Going forward, I believe it will be better if the government sits down with all the subvented agencies which  want to sign this performance contract to identify their logistics and manpower gaps and only if this is provided that the employer can hold the managers of state-owned institutions accountable.
 
The government cannot hold tertiary institutions accountable for churning out mediocre graduates if it fails to provide the necessary tools and equipment needed for efficient service delivery since it is purely a contract of service.
 
Again, the public sector is subject to political interference and it is obvious the managers of these state agencies are not autonomous to take decisions that will make the public sector competitive and efficient.  The decision by the government for subvented agencies to repatriate 34 per cent of their internal generated funds to the central government will put pressure on many initiated projects that are capable of generating IGF to the state institutions.

 To conclude, performance contract cannot be a ceremonial paper work and it must be done with the full commitment of the parties involved particularly the employer.Fulfil your part of the employees’ expectation by providing all the necessary logistics and equipment and hold the managers of public institutions accountable for not meeting their targets set in the performance contract.