Constitution Review Commission (CRC) has Opened the Door, Ghana Must Now Reform Wage Governance!

Introduction

In Ghana today, compensation of employees accounts for one of the largest components of public expenditure, yet many workers continue to struggle under wages that barely keep pace with the cost of living. The national minimum wage, though reviewed periodically, still falls short of functioning as a genuine social floor, while within the public service, take-home pay is increasingly shaped by allowances rather than base salary. At the same time, public concern over the emoluments of political and constitutional office holders remains persistent and intense.

These challenges are often discussed separately, but they are in fact symptoms of a deeper problem: a fragmented system of wage governance. The Constitution Review Commission (CRC), through its recommendation to establish an Independent Public Emoluments Commission, has opened an important door for reform. The critical question now is whether Ghana will walk through that door fully, or merely adjust one visible part of an inequitable system.

Analysis

The CRC’s proposal to remove the determination of emoluments of specified public office holders from political discretion responds directly to long-standing concerns surrounding Article 71 of the Constitution. It recognises that allowing beneficiaries of public pay to influence their own remuneration undermines public trust, equity, and fiscal discipline. However, Article 71 is an entrenched constitutional provision, and any amendment to it requires a national referendum. This reality demands caution, but it should not be mistaken for constitutional paralysis.

Entrenchment protects procedure and coverage, not exclusivity. It guarantees that specified office holders must be subject to independent emoluments determination, but it does not prohibit Parliament from extending the same principles of independence, objectivity, and transparency to the wider public sector through ordinary legislation. In this sense, entrenchment should be understood as a floor for reform, not a ceiling.

From a public finance perspective, Ghana operates a single public wage bill funded by taxpayers. Yet within that single fiscal reality, wages are governed by disconnected regimes. The Single Spine Salary Structure preserves internal relativity, but leaves many workers close to subsistence due to wage compression and allowance distortions. The national minimum wage, intended as a universal floor of dignity, often functions merely as a compliance benchmark. At the apex, special emoluments regimes reinforce perceptions of insulation and privilege.

Treating Article 71 as the sole moral problem risks institutionalising selective justice and encouraging strict discipline for political elites while leaving ordinary workers to endure an unreformed and inequitable wage system.

This imbalance is most clearly seen in base pay determination. In practice, base pay setting in Ghana is bipartite rather than tripartite, involving Government and Organised Labour, with employers’ organisations not represented. Government therefore appears both as employer at the negotiating table and as fiscal gatekeeper under the Public Financial Management Act, ultimately determining what can be afforded, approved, and implemented.

The imbalance is structural. It does not arise from bad faith or weak negotiation tactics, but from the institutional design of the system itself. Government simultaneously acts as employer and fiscal authority, while Organised Labour has no independent institutional counterweight to assess fairness, validate affordability, or reconcile wage justice with fiscal authority. This structural imbalance fuels recurring tension, politicisation, and mistrust in base pay outcomes.

The CRC’s recommendation rests on a compelling premise: wage determination is a governance issue, not a political favour. If conflict of interest justifies removing Article 71 emoluments from partisan control, the same reasoning applies—indeed applies more strongly—to base pay determination, where Government negotiates wages while also controlling the fiscal framework within which those wages must be realised.

This reform direction can be anchored in international labour standards to which Ghana is bound. ILO Convention 100 requires remuneration systems to be based on objective job evaluation and equal pay for work of equal value. ILO Convention 131 requires minimum wage fixing to take into account both the needs of workers and their families and relevant economic factors such as productivity and employment. Together, these standards point toward a coherent wage order that balances fairness with sustainability.

Extending independent oversight does not require replacing existing wage-setting arrangements. Rather, it calls for superintendence, not substitution. Through legislation, Parliament can empower an Independent Public Emoluments Commission to provide oversight over base pay determination, setting guiding principles, promoting objectivity and transparency, and ensuring coherence between base pay, minimum wage policy, and overall fiscal realities.

Conclusion

Meaningful wage governance reform cannot end with Article 71 alone. Base pay determination in Ghana remains constrained by a structural imbalance in which Government acts simultaneously as employer and fiscal gatekeeper, leaving Organised Labour without an independent institutional counterweight.

Situating base pay determination within a structured, bipartite mechanism between Government and Organised Labour, operating under the oversight of an Independent Public Emoluments Commission, would introduce coherence, predictability, and fairness into Ghana’s wage system. Such reform would respect constitutional entrenchment while extending independent wage governance across the public sector.

By completing the reform vision opened by the Constitution Review Commission, Ghana can move from episodic wage disputes to a principled, credible, and just wage order. Wage justice, like constitutional integrity, cannot be selective.

Kenneth K. Koomson