The Ministry of Public Sector Reform will this year begin the implementation of an action plan to improve service delivery of local government units. According to the Sector Minister Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, the Decentralization Action Plan, which forms part of priorities for reform this year, would involve the offloading of redundant staff of the Civil Service to the yet to be introduced local government service. He said even though the plan should have originally been implemented last year, there was very little action on it. In an interview with Joy News, Dr. Nduom however said implementation this year cannot be postponed as the reforms would be difficult in an election year. He said “Reform is a challenging task in any case but then when we are inching towards an election year 2008, then it becomes even more imperative and much more important that we accelerate the pace of reform in a year like 2007 so that whatever it is that might be difficult, whatever it is that might be challenging, whatever it is that might tempt someone to say that we should put this aside till after the election, we get those things done this year and then next year the reforms can continue. “Because as a nation attention is going to be divided between election and administration and we want to make sure that we do the job that we are supposed to do.”