The term “Per diem” is an amount of money given to an individual by an organization or state institution per day to cover travel-related expenses for work done away from home. Employers pay their workers a usual daily rate without regard to the actual amount spent by the employee.
In Africa, a huge sum of public funds is allocated per-diem as part of the incentive structure. The reason organizations or state institutions provide per diem to their employees is to increase their motivation to attend meetings or travel for work missions. Evidence from many African countries and projects suggests that per-diem (which is an incentive) is being abused and has constrained the public purse, retarding the development of states.
The Ghanaian Case
Bringing the narrative to Ghana, a large amount of public funding is being allocated to provide politicians and senior public servants with per diem and other incentives. The ideology behind the payment of per diem is to motivate employees to be effective and productive, but meetings that can be organized within office premises are relocated to distant locations to ensure that participants receive per diem for their involvement.
Per diem and other incentives put pressure on the public purse, and instead of the government halting or cutting off these, the government has imposed a tax on the citizens complaining about the high cost of living. These government officials and public workers’ salaries are more than enough to cater to themselves, yet bonuses are given to them that are by far more than the pay of an ordinary citizen.
The payment of per diem slows down government operations, and sometimes wrong people are sent for training. Per diem encourages senior staff to attend meetings instead of their subordinates. Governments’ operations become slow because officials are encouraged to attend meetings and conferences rather than perform administrative tasks. A junior staff member might be the ideal candidate to participate in basic skill-based training, but supervisors may choose to attend instead because of the payment of per diem. Workers who could have used the opportunity to improve their skills are not allowed, but people who attend the program may not benefit because they lack the prerequisites.
Is This Worth It?
The politicians who assume public positions and senior civil servants are vehicles to drive instead of using their cars. In some advanced countries, government officials use public transport, yet developing nations like Ghana spent millions of cedis to provide these public and civil servants with vehicles. The country’s debt keeps on skyrocketing, yet the government still borrows high sums of money to provide per diems and vehicles to officials. Teachers complain of lacking materials to tutor school children, yet the government pays much more attention to satisfying the luxury of these officials than securing the future of the youth. Junior staff often demonstrate of salary deficit, yet this senior staff receives a huge sum of money as incentives.