Finance expert and former Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, Dr. Sam Mensah has advised present and future governments to always create an environment that will allow technocrats to speak, critique and contribute to the development of the country.

According to him, technocrats are assets to the country but are unable to speak due to the tag of being anti-government or pro-government.

“We need to build a culture in which technocrats are free to speak. Very often technocrats are very quiet, they don’t say much for fear of offending government or some of the political leaders, but we need to have technocrats who are open”.

“We need to encourage them to speak their minds and encourage them to point out to politicians where they’re going wrong,” he said.

Dr. Sam Mensah also urged government to facilitate support to businesses to help them recover from the shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Generally, government’s Covid-19 strategy has been seen as a good strategy but occasionally there have been lapses. However, overall, I wouldn’t say Ghana has not had a respectable Covid-19 strategy.”

“What we need to do is to accelerate the support we’re giving to businesses, so they can start re-employing, bringing idle capacity to work,” he suggested.