Public servants with MMDAs must adhere to ethics — Dr Ato Arthur

The Head of the Local Government Service, Dr Stephen Nana Ato Arthur, has charged public servants working in the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) to be guided by the professional ethics of their work to ensure quality service delivery.

He added that they were also to facilitate the realisation of the government's transformation agenda for the country.

Dr Arthur made this remark when he addressed the Staff of the Ga East Municipal Assembly at a durbar in his honour at Abokobi as part of his familiarisation tour of the MMDAs.

Familiarisation visit

The visit to the Ga East Municipal Assembly was the third on the schedule for the Head of the Service following similar visits earlier in the day to the Ga South and Ga Central respectively.

Since his appointment, Dr Arthur has engaged top management and key officers both at the district and regional levels with the aim of acquainting himself with the various institutions within the service.

It was an opportunity for him to touch base with all the staff of the various MMDAs and share his vision and interact with them.

Professionalism is key

At a staff durbar at Abokobi, Dr Arthur noted that professionalism was key to the realisation of the vision of the service, "to become a world-class client-oriented decentralised service."

He observed that there were several acts of professional misconduct among officers in the service which, he said, were inimical to public service.

Recounting his days as a former Central Regional Minister and Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) respectively, Dr Arthur noted that there were rots in the system which were occasioned by breach of professional ethics by some public officers.

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Punctuality

Dr Arthur stated that lateness to work was a bane to service delivery and performance of the MMDAs, positing that people must be paid in commensuration with the hours of work and charged the MCE to install a biometric clock-in device to check attendance to work.

He rebuked officers who spent most of their working time talking on phone and on social media, stating their negative impact on productivity in the service and advised those culpable to stop.

The head of service further cautioned officers against the practice where some of them took photographs of official information and documents and leaked them to the public, particularly to the media, ostensibly to score political points.

"Professionalism goes with service delivery. Elections are over and if you will be using your mobile phones to snap pictures of official documents and give them to people to discuss in the media, then you better join them, you don't belong here,” he stressed.

Dr Arthur appealed to the public officers in the assemblies, particularly the Finance and Works departments, to desist from the practice of appropriating the assembly's revenue to themselves and rather work hard to improve the internally generated fund (IGF) to enable the assembly to motivate them and develop the municipality.

He expressed dissatisfaction about the performance of the assembly in last year's ratings, citing revenue leakage as a major cause of underperformance in most assemblies and charged the officers of the internal audit to provide the needed professional guidance for the MCE and the assembly to avoid external audit queries.

Dr Arthur advised officers to accept postings to any part of the country as their services may be needed there most and should not see it as punishment.

Internally generated fund

The MCE for the Ga East Municipal Assembly, Madam Janet Tulasi Mensah, said 138 out of the total staff of 305 of the assembly were paid from the IGF and that put enormous strain on the revenue of the assembly.

She, therefore, appealed to the head of service to consider absorbing them onto the government payroll.