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HEAD OF Policy, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Office of the President, Dr. Tony Aidoo, appears to be on collision course with President John Dramani Mahama over cash. The outspoken big shot of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is virtually accusing the Mahama administration of starving him of the needed funds to run his office, crying out that his outfit has been rendered almost redundant and dormant since the death of President John Atta Mills. As if he has become a pariah in the Mahama administration, Dr. Aidoo, who sounded frustrated, told Asempa FM yesterday that problems such as non-payment of salaries for his staff for the last six months were not issues that he would normally put out for public consumption. He, however, said his outfit had been abandoned by the NDC administration for no apparent reason, because there had not been information flow since the death of President Mills. According to him, his counterpart in South Africa run a $15million annual budget and a large manpower to work with, wondering why in Ghana he could not even get money on regular basis to pay his staff. Pouring out his frustration, Dr. Aidoo indicated on Asempa FM�s Ekosii Sen programme that his office employed highly skilled ICT personnel to help him carry out his activities, but such personnel were being paid pittance because of lack of funds. The problem, according to him, had been compounded, particularly when one had to deal with expired news reports as there had not been any inflow of quality information for some time now. According Dr. Aiddo, President Mahama had been made aware of these predicaments about nine months ago and had promised to resource the office. The NDC guru, who indicated that the salary arrears had since not been paid, expressed his readiness to throw in the towel and walk away at any time, if his services were no longer needed. Dr. Aidoo said he had faithfully served the country over the years during which he received insults and even slaps in some cases. Praying he was not at a dead end, he hoped President Mahama would appreciate the importance of the office and let funds and information flow to his outfit. Dr. Aidoo wondered if late President Atta Mills created the office just to thank him because his office had not received the kind of collaboration and support it enjoyed when it was established. �It is as if Professor Mills created that office just to thank Dr. Aidoo, which is something that I find very, very unfortunate,� he lamented. Judgement Debt It would be recalled that Dr. Aidoo had been expressing concerns in the media in recent times about government�s apparent lack of interest in pursuing individuals and institutions that had been wrongly paid huge sums of monies as judgement debts. �People have something to hide at all the levels of the public service and at the levels of the political oversight. And people can always hide things, if they don�t give you the information and that is what has happened,� Dr. Aidoo stated. He pointed out that even with the scanty information he received during the presidency of Prof Mills, he was able to report at least three times on overspending, increasing debt burden, and over-bloated payroll. He indicated he enjoyed high level of co-operation between him and former Auditor and Accountant General, R.K. Tuffour. �We went through the data and identified ghost names, double names and so on. We also suggested that some measures must be taken to clean up the payroll. �One of those measures was the biometric registration of public servants,� Dr. Aidoo pointed out, adding that his office was supposed to support the presidency with monitoring of what was going on as well as evaluate most developmental impact assessments. He said even though this duty was diligently carried out in monitoring execution of projects, the impact of these projects on the lives of the beneficiary community could not be assessed. Consequently, Dr. Aidoo indicated it was impossible to measure the impact of a project when vital information such as costs and values of such projects were not forthcoming. By Awudu Mahama