In the last 54 years since I was born, if anyone can point me to two ministries that have failed Ghana more consistently, more visibly, and more comfortably than the Ministries responsible for Local Government and Labour or Employment and Social Welfare, I will gladly donate my SSNIT benefits to them.

These two institutions have supervised some of the most embarrassing levels of disorder, unemployment, indiscipline, urban decay, and administrative uselessness in modern Ghanaian history while behaving as though existence alone is achievement.

The Ministry of Local Government presides over assemblies that cannot enforce basic sanitation, planning, zoning, drainage, hawking, or street trading regulations even in the immediate vicinity of their own offices. Filth flourishes. Chaos thrives. Illegal structures multiply. Pavements vanish. Drains are blocked openly. Yet year after year, salaries are paid, workshops are held, V8s are driven, fuel coupons are consumed, foreign trips are undertaken, and strategic plans are printed on glossy paper as though progress is occurring somewhere invisible to ordinary citizens.

Then comes the Ministry of Labour or Employment and Social Welfare, perhaps one of the greatest seat warming institutions in the country. Decades of graduates roaming hopelessly. Apprenticeship systems poorly structured. Almost no serious national labour market intelligence. Weak industrial linkage. Minimal innovation in skills transformation. Little urgency towards large-scale employability.

Meanwhile, conferences continue. Committees sit. Allowances flow. Acronyms multiply. Consultants consult consultants.

Too many square pegs occupying offices requiring vision, toughness, creativity, and execution. Too many people mistake occupying office for working. Too many institutions have become ceremonial holding areas for politically convenient individuals with neither urgency nor measurable impact.

The tragedy is not only incompetence. It is the normalization of incompetence. Ghana has become too comfortable rewarding presence instead of performance.

If these ministries were private companies, many would have collapsed decades ago or been completely restructured. But in government, failure often receives another budget allocation, another retreat, another speech, and another air-conditioned year of doing almost nothing measurable.