Veteran Ghanaian journalist and Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has joined the ongoing discussion about the salary gap within Ghana’s public sector, urging a moral justification for the growing wage inequality.
His remarks follow a Facebook post by Professor Kweku Azar, who openly criticized the significant gaps in public sector salaries and called for comprehensive reforms to address what he views as a broken compensation structure.
Professor Azar pointed out that salaries for Independent Government Bodies, including the Attorney General’s office, saw an 81% increase from January to December 2024.
He condemned this surge as highly unacceptable, especially at a time when ordinary Ghanaians were bearing the strain of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme—an initiative tied to Ghana’s financial bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
According to Prof. Azar, while citizens and pensioners were forced to share the burden and tighten their belts, Independent Government Bodies, and surely other Article 71 beneficiaries, were quietly awarded backdated raises. “They get salary arrears. We get austerity. They get adjusted emoluments; we get emergency levies.”
In an interview monitored by The Vaultz News, Mr. Pratt expressed disbelief over the stark wage inequality, questioning how some public workers could receive thousands of cedis monthly while others earn as little as GHS 400 or GHS 500.
He stressed that such disparities are unjustifiable when all employees operate under the same national economic conditions.
Mr. Pratt further argued that the continuous escalation of salaries for a select few within the public sector is deeply concerning.
He acknowledged that Professor Azar raised critical issues that demand national attention and resolution to address the entrenched salary imbalance.
“What is the moral justification for paying any Ghanaian 62k a month and paying another Ghanaian 400.00 a month? Tell me any morality that can justify that, and it is scandalous. Nothing can justify paying somebody Ghs 500.00 a month and paying somebody in the same situation, they go to the same market and so on, paying another 62k a month”.
Kwesi Pratt Jnr
Justification for Salary Gap Rejected
Furthermore, Kwesi Pratt argued that the rationale often used to defend these high salaries—claiming that Article 71 officeholders and other top government officials possess greater skills than the average Ghanaian—should not be accepted, as it lacks merit and cannot be sustained.
“Because the people who have the GHS 500.00 a month job, the judges cannot do their work. They don’t have the skills to do their work. They cannot do their work, you understand? They can’t. I am telling you they can’t.
“Every human needs a certain number of calories to survive, every human being needs a certain level of healthcare to stay alive, we need to have clean water, and so on. In fact, if you deny some human beings the right to have certain quantities of calories per day, you have sentenced them to death, you have just sentenced them to slow death, not just death, but slow death, and that is why I am in full agreement with Prof. Kweku Azar. He is raising relevant questions that we need to look at”.
Kwesi Pratt Jnr,
In line with the Constitution, Article 71(1)(b) outlines that the list of beneficiaries includes the Speaker of Parliament and their deputies, along with Members of Parliament.
It also covers the Chief Justice and other Justices of the Superior Court of Judicature, the Auditor-General, the Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, the Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice and their deputies, as well as the Administrator of the District Assemblies Common Fund.
This list further extends to the Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and members of the National Council for Higher Education—regardless of how they are titled—alongside officials of the Public Services Commission, the National Media Commission, and the National Commission for Civic Education.
According to the provisions of the Constitution, all individuals identified under these categories are paid from the Consolidated Fund. While individuals such as Kweku Azar and Kwesi Pratt Jnr have openly criticized this emolument framework, others have defended it, raising critical questions about the contemporary relevance of the constitutional provisions.
As the Constitutional Review Committee continues its work, it remains to be seen whether these matters will be revisited to reflect modern realities in public service and align with globally accepted compensation structures.
Currently, Ghana’s minimum wage stands at GHS 19.97, which amounts to approximately GHS 559.16 per month based on a 28-working-day calendar. This represents a 10% increase from the previous rate of GHS 18.15 in 2024.
Although this increment appears notable on paper, it falls short of addressing the financial hardships brought about by the prevailing economic downturn that has affected not just Ghana but much of Africa.
This disparity highlights the urgent need for collective dialogue and decisive action from stakeholders to re-evaluate the public sector wage structure and bring it into balance with the earnings of Article 71 officeholders.
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