The Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr Emmanuel Kofi Nti, has urged workers to change their attitude towards time keeping to help the development of the nation.
He said being punctual required discipline, and insisted that “we cannot tolerate indiscipline and expect our nation to develop at the same time”.
Mr Nti was speaking after he signed a pledge of punctuality with Punctuality Ghana Foundation to demonstrate his commitment to time keeping and discipline at the workplace.
“As we have attitudinal change as a people, we will then see development going with it,” he said.
Although Mr Nti said he had already made a strong commitment to ensuring punctuality at GRA through the signing of attendance books, he said he thought it necessary to reiterate that stand with the signing of the pledge.
The initiative by Punctuality Ghana has come as no surprise, as President Akufo-Addo has on many occasions stressed the need for Ghana’s working population to adopt the habit of punctuality.
Collaboration
The GRA Commissioner General said there was the need for collaboration between the GRA and the Foundation to ensure that Ghanaians paid their taxes on time, adding that the GRA was turning to innovative ways to ensure that taxpayers could easily meet their tax obligations through ways such as mobile money transactions.
The Project Co-ordinator for Punctuality Ghana Foundation, Miss Naa Meryeh Quaynor-Mettle, said the visit to the GRA was part of her outfit’s ongoing public education campaign on punctuality which started in June 2018.
She said the mission of the organisation was to facilitate Ghana’s effort to become the most efficient African nation, stressing that the effort must change from the mere complaince with the 0800 hours to 1700 hours work schedule to offering of a 24-hour service.
Punctuality Ghana’s mandate, she said, was to measure punctuality in terms of productivity, growth, development, increasing government revenue, minimising corruption, and making Ghana attractive for foreign investment.
A punctuality crusader Mr Emmanuel Amarquaye, expressed concern about the bureaucracies in particularly public organisations.
He said the practice consumed time and money, and was a hindrance to effective delivery of time-bound services that people would be willing to pay for.
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