‘Is It Wisdom?’: Former Civil Service Head Says $400 Salary for Officials Managing $1m Fuels Corruption

A former Head of Ghana’s Civil Service has ignited fresh debate over public-sector pay, questioning how the state can entrust senior officials with millions of dollars in public funds while paying them a fraction of what those responsibilities demand.

Dr. Alex Glover-Quartey, who led the Civil Service from 2003 to 2006, said the remuneration of Chief Directors and other senior public servants must reflect the scale of their responsibilities, warning that inadequate pay creates conditions in which corruption becomes harder to contain. He made the remarks in an interview with broadcaster Kafui Dey .

“You are giving the Chief Director of a ministry over a million dollars to manage, and you are paying him $400 a month. Is it wisdom?” Dr. Glover-Quartey recounted asking representatives of the World Bank and a UK delegation during his tenure, when he sought support for higher salaries . “Well, they saw it.”

A Proposal That Shocked Donors

Dr. Glover-Quartey recalled that one of his first engagements as Head of the Civil Service was a meeting with World Bank and UK representatives to push for a monthly salary of roughly US$2,500 for Chief Directors. The proposal, he said, initially surprised the representatives.

“I was trying to convince them to pay salaries that were ahead of, I said, roughly $2,500 a month to Chief Directors. And they looked shocked,” he said .

Some accounts of the interview placed the proposed figure at $2,000 for directors, with Dr. Glover-Quartey recalling the representatives’ shock at the mention of the amount . Regardless of the precise figure, his central argument remained unchanged: the gap between fiduciary responsibility and take-home pay had become indefensible.

“You cannot continue to pay the pittance that we pay to our civil servants and expect them to manage such huge amounts and not touch them,” he said .

He acknowledged that government could argue the country does not generate enough revenue to pay public servants higher salaries, but maintained that authorities should first mobilise the resources needed to improve remuneration. “So my response was, start by looking for the money to pay them and expect a reciprocity,” he said .

Questioning the Perks

Beyond base salaries, Dr. Glover-Quartey took aim at the extensive benefits package available to senior officials, including support for electricity, water, and telephone bills. He argued that such arrangements can be abused and should be reconsidered as part of broader remuneration reform.

“Stop paying the electricity bills, water bills, telephone bills. In some cases, when you pay, you have free telephone calls and so on; people abuse them,” he said . He suggested that officials should instead be paid enough to cover such expenses themselves, arguing that a sufficiently competitive salary would give them the freedom to make their own choices about vehicles and personal costs .

A Long-Running Debate

Dr. Glover-Quartey’s intervention lands in a long-simmering national argument over whether Ghana’s public-sector pay arrangements are adequate to attract and retain competent officials—and whether low pay is a root cause of pervasive corruption.

The debate has recently been amplified by former President John Agyekum Kufuor, who in March 2026 argued that poor remuneration has made corruption a “coping mechanism” for public servants. Kufuor, citing Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, said top-tier governance requires top-tier compensation, warning that underpaid officials face financial pressures that make misconduct more likely .

Ghana’s public service remuneration is administered under the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), introduced in 2010 to harmonise pay and allowances across the public sector. The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission manages salaries drawn from the Consolidated Fund. For the 2026 fiscal year, the government approved a 9% salary increase for all public sector workers under the SSSS, alongside a 9% adjustment to the national daily minimum wage, which now stands at GH₵21.77 .

Critics of the current system argue that across-the-board percentage increases do little to close the gap between senior officials’ responsibilities and their pay, particularly at the Chief Director level where discretionary control over budgets and contracts is substantial.

Integrity and Reciprocity

Dr. Glover-Quartey framed his proposal not as a concession to potential wrongdoers but as a bargain: financial security in exchange for professionalism, discipline, and responsible stewardship of public resources. His position places remuneration at the centre of the broader conversation about institutional performance and accountability in Ghana’s public administration—a conversation that has gained urgency as the country navigates economic recovery and seeks to strengthen the integrity of its public institutions.

For now, the question he posed to those World Bank representatives two decades ago remains unanswered: if the state expects integrity from those who manage its millions, is it wisdom to pay them as though it expects otherwise?