GACC, partners to train 1,140 citizens on corruption detection, reporting avenues 

Three Anti-corruption organisations are aggressively training a total of 1,140 citizens, mainly civil society organisations (CSOs) on forms of corruption and reporting avenues to fight against corruption.

The organisations are the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) and Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) and funded by the European Union.

Under the "Strengthening Accountability, Rule of Law, and Institutional Responsiveness in Ghana” project, it has been rolled out in 24 districts in the Northern, Middle, Southern and Coastal belts to reduce corruption in the country.

The training was to deepen participants knowledge on corruption to enable them to detect and report corrupt practices in their communities to anti-corruption institutions for action.

Corruption 

The organisations said corruption remained a significant challenge in the country.

The phenomenon, which cuts across every sector of the country's economy, undermines development, governance and public trust. 

This pervasive issue is highlighted by Ghana's below-average performance on the Government Effectiveness Index (48.2 per cent between 2010 and 2019) and Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, with an average score of 43 per cent over the last three years (2020-2022). 

Additionally, the CDD-Ghana's Afrobarometer survey (2022) and the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and CHRAJ's Corruption in Ghana Survey (2022) indicate that over 75 per cent of Ghanaians believe corruption has increased. 

These indicators reflect systemic weaknesses in governance, rule of law, and anti-corruption enforcement.

It is in the light of this that GACC, CDD-Ghana and GII teamed up to train criticizes to detect and report corrupt practices.

Bono and Ahafo 

As part of the programme, more than 200 people from the Bono and Ahafo regions have undergone a two-day intensive training workshop.

The training was organised separately in Sunyani, Berekum and Tain in the Bono Region and Bechem in the Ahafo Region.

Similar two-day trainings had also been organised in Tatale, Yendi, Kumbungu and Savelugu in the Northern Region.

It was used to expose the participants to types of corruption and state institutions available for the participants to teport issues of corruption to reduce the menance in the country.

The beneficiaries were, therefore, taught to become familiar with the forms of corruption and avenues to report people engaged in corruption.

The objectives of the project are to deepen understanding of corruption, its consequences, citizen reporting mechanisms, build the capacity of participants to advocate transparency and accountability and empower them to lead anti-corruption awareness campaigns in their communities.

It is a three-year project aimed at enhancing the watchdog role of CSOs to advocate and promote reforms on accountability and the rule of law in the country.

It employs a three-pronged approach: namely; empowering citizens to use corruption reporting mechanisms, supporting investigative journalism, and reforming legislative frameworks.
 
Communitied have also been targeted under the project to actively demand accountability and fight corruption to help foster a culture of accountability and transparency.

Its target groups are CSOs, community-based organisations (CBOs), women, youth and persons living with disabilities (PWDs), media, political parties and Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAS).

Lack of evidence 

Speaking in Sunyani on Wednesday, the Executive Secretary of GACC, Beauty Emefa Narteh, said fighting corruption in the country was extremely difficult because of lack of evidence.

"To enable us reduce corruption, we must all programme our minds that corruption is a bad practice," she said.

Mrs Narteh said corrupt practices had been normalised in the country, saying, "corruption is no longer seen as a bad practice in this country".

She said corruption had cut across every sector of the country's economy, including the education and judiciary sectors.

Mrs Narteh said because of corruption, the country's electoral processes had become expensive, making the sector to become an investment and lucrative ventures.

"Some people who lived with us in the same communities without properties get rich overnight, building mansions after political appointments," she said.

Mrs Narteh therefore called for an urgent need to address the monetisation of the country's electoral processes to prevent drug dealers and other rich criminals from occupying political positions.

Accountability 

The Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the GACC, Solomon Yankah, said the goal of the project was to contribute to strengthening public accountability, rule of law and responsiveness, through the empowerment of civil society and media and improvement in the internal control regime.

He said forums were being organised to create awareness, develop an electronic platform for tracking corruption and sharing of information on public procurement and audit recommendations.

He said the project was designed to advocate reforms of public ethics, regulations including public asset declaration, campaign financing regulations, and internal control regime and monitor the compliance of public procurement law, conflict of interest and the implementation of audit recommendations.

Corruption consequences

The Bono Regional Director of CHRAJ, Gawusu Abdul-Wadood, who took the participants through the forms of corruption, said corruption had a severe and far-reaching consequence, which negatively affected various spheres of a country's life.

He mentioned reduction of economic growth, increased poverty and inequality, distorted markets and unfair competition, reduced foreign investment and trade and decreased access to basic services as some of the impacts of corruption.

Mr Wadood said corruption emanated from man's greedy, selfish, self-centered, unbridled pecuniary interest base interaction with the society and environment.

He said corruption affected both poor and rich countries as well as democratic and non-democratic systems.

Mr Wadood mentioned bribery, embezzlement, extortion, nepotism, kickback, abuse of power, money laundering, favoritism and fraud as some of the corrupt practices.

He said the country had several institutions and Acts such as the National Anti-Corruption Action plan (NACAP), CHRAJ, Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), National Anti-Corruption Agency (NACA), GII and police among others to fight corruption.

Responsibility 

For his part, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Global Media Foundation (GloMeF), Raphael Godlove Ahenu, said the fight against corruption required a collective responsibility of all institutions.

He said though, there were several instructions the public could report corrupt practices, many Ghanaians were unaware of such institutions.

Mr Ahenu urged the government to resource the anti-corruption institutions with logistics to facilitate their work.

Writer's email: biiya.ali@graphic.com.gh