Ambassador-designate, Dr. Tony Aidoo has said ministers and MPs who are pursuing higher education while on the job are cheating the Ghanaian taxpayer.

He extended the criticism to all public servants who are in school but still receive their salaries, insisting  “all those people who are doing this are cheats; are social cheats…..because you are stealing resources from the public; you are hurting public interest for your own personal parochial interest.”   

His comments come on the heels of criticism by Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Rt. Rev. Prof Emmanuel Amartey,  that some parliamentarians and Ministers of State abandon their jobs to attend school.

Delivering a sermon to mark the dedication of a church building put up by the Epiphany Congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in Wa, Rt. Rev, Martey said “certain jobs and positions are not for students,” and that such a way of shirking responsibilities on the part of some Parliamentarians and Ministers contribute to low productivity, translating into lack of cash for payment of workers."

Speaking on the Super Morning Show on Monday, Dr. Tony Aidoo couldn't help but agree with the man of God.

 “It is a gross dereliction of duty for you to take on the responsibility of an MP or a minister of state and fail to deliver hundred per cent’’, he said.

“I believe that so far as public servants are concerned, it may be onerous but it is your duty; your cardinal duty to work at the right time, at the right place and to perform relative to the objectives for which you have been engaged and you must do it in real time not at the expense of the government’s time," he stressed.

According to the former Director of Policy Evaluation and Monitoring at the Presidency, “if everybody was performing his or her functions and obeying the rules and imperatives of the system, the government of Ghana would need only half the personnel in the public service to deliver. The other 50% is superfluous.”

He observed that for the country to attain meaningful productivity from her workers, people would need to re-orient their understanding of what productivity really is.