Two governance and labour experts have said that staff transfers in Ghana’s public service are fundamentally misunderstood, with politicisation and personal expectations distorting what is otherwise a routine and legally grounded administrative practice.
Speaking separately on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Thursday, May 7, 2026, labour consultant Austin Gamey and local governance expert Richard Fiadomor both argued that transfers serve legitimate organisational functions but have been undermined by abuse and political interference over time.
Gamey explained that under Ghana’s labour law, transfers are primarily designed to build capacity across institutions, prevent the entrenchment of corruption through long postings, and ensure that personnel are deployed where they are most needed. He stressed that employees generally do not have the right to refuse a legitimate transfer and that unions and internal grievance mechanisms exist precisely to handle cases where the process is misapplied.
He pointed to the military and police as examples of sectors where periodic redeployment serves a clear anti-corruption function, preventing the kind of familiarity between officers and communities that can erode professional conduct. While conceding that abuses do occur, often driven by individuals exploiting positions of authority, Gamey maintained that institutional safeguards are available even if awareness of them remains low.
Fiadomor offered a more pointed assessment of why the public service has developed such a fraught relationship with transfers. He said the root problem is not the transfer system itself but the politicisation that has warped how it operates in practice. Public servants lobbying politicians for preferred postings, resisting redeployments to less urbanised areas, and colleagues undermining one another by appealing to political actors have all combined to create a culture of suspicion around a process that should be unremarkable.
“No civil servant should expect to remain in one station from appointment to retirement,” he stated, adding that such expectations are both unrealistic and damaging to institutional effectiveness.
He warned that if political patronage continues to shape who gets transferred and where, it will hollow out the integrity of the civil service even as the formal regulatory framework remains technically intact. The problem, both experts agreed, is less about the existence of policy and more about the consistency and integrity of its application.
