In the heat of recent Ghanaian elections, many readers likely heard a lot about nursing & teaching trainee allowances. But rarely about the actual numbers involved.
Well, it costs the govt ~$14 million to pay trainee nurses & ~$20 million to pay trainee teachers their allowances.
Altogether, that’s ~$34m a year.
This is roughly the same amount of money being paid to the likes of Kelni GVG to supposedly monitor telecom traffic every year. And considerably less than is being paid to the likes of SML to monitor fuel distribution.
Careful and lucid studies have been published to show that these so-called “monitoring” programs are conceptually flawed and operationally useless. In short, it is as good as throwing the money away.
Why is it that trainee allowances have become political hot potato but not these monitoring programs?
Why do citizens not seem to care?
What should activists do to “politicise” important but seemingly “unsexy” policy issues?
Obviously, the fact that trainee allowances directly hit the pockets of an identifiable group makes a huge difference.
Would there ever be a large enough group of citizens concerned about how politicians spend public money? Large enough to matter, that is?
