Employment Minister Dr. Rashid Pelpuo has accused the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration of leaving behind a payroll crisis, which he described as a strategic move to create difficulties for the incoming government.

In an interview on JoyNews' PM Express on October 7, Dr. Pelpuo, who is also the MP for Wa Central, criticised the NPP for hiring thousands of workers without proper financial planning, which has led to a significant strain on the current government's budget.
“It’s in their DNA to give the incoming government a problem, let them fail, and let the people say that they have failed,” Dr Pelpuo said.

He pointed out that upon taking office, the current administration inherited a situation where 12,000 new employees had been added to the payroll without adequate provisions made to pay them.
“This tells the story of what complaints we had when we assumed office, that at the point of exit of the NPP government, they imposed on us 12,000 new workforce that they did not prepare to pay them, didn’t have the money to pay them, but employed them."

"And then they exited the three-month budget which they had to prepare for as we take over, but didn’t take into consideration any of these.”

The Minister’s comments come amid ongoing protests by the Coalition of Unpaid Nurses and Midwives, who are demanding payment for nearly 7,000 health workers who have gone without salaries for up to 10 months. These nurses had been officially posted in December 2024 after financial clearance, yet many are still waiting for their pay.

Dr. Pelpuo linked the current crisis to similar issues faced during the tenure of the late President Atta Mills, when the outgoing Kufuor administration left behind the complexities of the Single Spine Salary Structure. He argued that it was a pattern of the NPP to leave the next government with unmanageable problems.
“So it’s like their DNA to give the incoming government a problem,” he said, adding that political motives had influenced the NPP's employment decisions rather than fiscal responsibility.

He also suggested that the timing of the mass recruitment, just before the 2024 elections, was driven by political calculations rather than sound financial planning.
“It shows that there had not been preparation. They had been preparing to contest an election,” he explained.

“Everything that will give them a good image from the side of the young person who is unemployed and looking for a job is what they will do. So they had done this over a period of time, hoping that in a culminating imposition of another 12,000, they would have then won the hearts of the young people and given them another mandate.”

Pressed on whether the recruitment was politically motivated, he confirmed, “That’s the assumption that what they are doing, there is some level of political decision tied to it, not necessarily because they wanted to pay them, but just to give them the impression that they too are employed.”

Despite these challenges, Dr. Pelpuo assured that the government was committed to resolving the issue.
“We are not complaining; we are looking at the situation where we can satisfy the will of the people who have given us the mandate,” he said.

“We acknowledge the fact that young people, as they are, need to start life and need to be comfortable working for what they have been employed to do. So we are doing everything to make it possible that we solve this problem before, maybe before the end of the year.”