GII Calls For Preventive Measures To Deal With Corruption

The political will of successive governments towards the fight against corruption has been a major concern for Ghanaians in times past.

Today, corruption still remains a major setback in the developmental agenda of Ghana with governments doing little to check corruption in an already rotten system.

It is against this background that the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) is calling for a whole new approach in an attempt to deal with corruption.

The anti-corruption organization is calling on the government to put in place preventive mechanisms against corruption and its related activities if it intends to win the war against the menace.

Ghana ranked 80 out of 180 countries on the 2019 global Corruption Perception Index, CPI, according to Transparency International.

Mary Addah, programs Manager at the Ghana Integrity Initiative, speaking on Eyewitness News called on the government to go out of its way to do in 2020 what it has not been doing in previous years.

“Some of the critical things that need to be in place to gain the confidence of business people and also the experts in-country in the public sector when it comes to corruption is for us to ensure that we are putting in place preventive mechanisms that truncate all the bureaucratic delays that facilitate people paying monies they are not supposed to pay making them form those opinions.”

“Ghana particularly has a duty to ensure that this particular year which is an election year, we look beyond what we have done before –the rhetoric — and tackle the issue of bribery, tackle the issue of nepotism, tackle the issues of insider-dealing clientelism and then also the political entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of the little gaps in our system to make huge sums of money”.

She further indicated that even though Ghana had beaten the Sub-Saharan average of 32%, it still failed to reach the world average of 43%, adding that in order to win the fight against corruption, Ghana needed to aim above 50%.

According to the corruption index, Ghana scored 41 out of a possible clean score of 100 – the same score as the previous year, 2018.

To ensure Ghana improves on its performance, the Government has been advised to enforce sanctions against vote-buying, abuse of incumbency and threats to voters to ensure this year's [2020] election is held in a free and fair environment.

The report also asked the Electoral Commission to also enforce sections 13 and 14 of the Political Parties Act, 2000 (Act 574) which deals with declaration of assets and expenditure by political parties. Details of Index

In the recent index, Denmark and New Zealand top with 87 points each. Syria, South Sudan, and Somalia were at the bottom of the Index with 13, 12 and 9 points respectively.

The highest-scoring region was Western Europe and the European Union with an average score of 66, while the lowest scoring region was Sub Sahara Africa, with an average score of 32.

In 2015, Ghana scored 47 and in 2016, came down to 43. In 2017, it recorded the worst performance with an average score of 40 out of 100 and rose marginally to 41 in 2018 and maintained that figure in 2019.

Even though Ghana performed better than neighboring Burkina Faso as well as Lesotho, the country could not catch up with countries like South Africa, Senegal, São Tomé and Principe that scored better than Ghana in 2018.

---CitinewsRoom