Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare, a private legal practitioner, has faulted the five-member Ntiamoah-Baidu Committee that arrived at the decision that First and Second Ladies should be paid salaries. According to him, the approved salaries violated the 1992 Constitution.
Popularly referred to as Prof. Kwaku Azar, in reacting to the committee’s recommendations, he asserted that, “… why then won’t Ntiamoa-Baidu violate the Constitution by adding the First and Second spouses to the pool of beneficiaries after noting that her predecessors had equally violated the Constitution by providing for people not specifically named under Article 71”.
Prof. Azar further described the committee’s work on the structure of salaries and allowances which includes the First and Second Ladies as ‘’boondoggle”.
He cited the Supreme Court Justice who served for a decade at each of the Superior Courts as an example to explain his point.
“On retirement, he will grab ex gratia equal to 30 months’ salary of a Supreme Court Judge + 20 months’ salary of an Appeal Court Judge + 10 months’ salary of a High Court Judge. Under Ntiamoa-Baidu that is: (GH₵22,724 * 30) + (GH₵21,528 * 20) + (GH₵19,136 * 10). That amounts to GH₵1,303,640 ex gratia for the 30 years of service.”
Prof. Kwaku Azar
Meanwhile he observed that, that is not the only areas where the treasury is at the mercy of the “big men”.
“Another area is the compensation of CEOs and Board Members of the SOEs, many of which make annual losses. As high as the President is paid, his salary is only 63% of that of the CEO of Ghana Gas as quoted by the Ntiamoa-Baidu emolument report”.
Prof. Kwaku Azar
Moreover, another Professor at the University of Ghana, Ransford Gyampo also rejected the approval of salaries for the First and Second Ladies of Ghana.
He stated that the offices of the First and Second ladies are just ceremonial offices and so institutionalizing salary payments to the occupants of these offices will not be an ideal situation.
Professor Gyampo said, “If we want to take good care of the spouses or the wives of former heads of state particularly heads of state who may have passed on. If they have surviving spouses and they are living like puppet, it is not nice. There is nothing wrong if we decide to take good care of those spouses of former heads of state.”
However, Prof. Gyampo noted that “even if we have to do that, it should not be dependent on the magnanimity of any president. It should be formally legislated.”
Also, he averred that, the heads of state after they have served and they have retired, they are taken care of till they will pass on.
“So, if a Head of State passes on and he has a surviving wife, I think that, it doesn’t hurt anything if the state decides to take care of the surviving spouse.”
Prof. Gyampo
He concluded that “this should not be because somebody wants to be nice to them but the state itself must actively formalise this relationship and take good care of them. That is different from telling me about the spouse of sitting president and the spouse of sitting vice president.”
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