Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, has indicated that the Ghana Statistical Service will be signing memoranda of understanding with all government institutions on the sharing of micro-data.

According to him, this is to expand the work the Statistical Service is doing on public sector salaries and compensations to help inform government’s decisions.

He explained that while the laws of Ghana mandates all institutions to provide data that has been requested by the Statistical Service, the signing of the MoUs will instead encourage government institutions to share the data voluntarily.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he said;

“I mean it’s possible we might have challenges but from my point of view that will not deter us. I mean the last thing you’ll do is to anticipate a challenge so that in that case you don’t proceed. We’re happy Comptroller listened to us and they’ve given us the data and we’ve started this conversation.

“Now we have the National Statistics Advisory Committee that brings on board 25 government MDAs and the institutions that I’ve talked about they’re all part of this. One of the things we want to do this year as a Service is sign MOU with all government institutions on the sharing of micro-data.

“So once we get that through and we’re taking this at the very high level because it requires some inter-ministerial guidance on this, then institutions will be obliged. Indeed, that is what the law says that GSS can approach any institution and that institution is obliged to give the Service what data.

“But we don’t want to always go and say that that is what the law is so give us the data, but it’s a matter of what is the relationship that we have and that is exactly what we’re building,” he said.

The latest report from the Statistical Service had revealed that about 80% of public sector workers receive less than 3,000 cedis as salary. The highest salary earner earns 81 times what the lowest earner on the government’s payroll does.