GII charges faith-based organisations to join corruption fight

Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the national chapter of Transparency International, is urging leaders of Religious and faith-based organisations to encourage their members to speak up, resist and report corrupt practices to help fight the menace.

This is to be hoisted on biblical verses and quranic texts as well as other guidelines that frown on Corruption.

Workshop

The Programmes Manager of GII, Mrs Mary Awelana Addah, told a two-day workshop for such leaders in Kumasi that they already had the capacity in existence and all that was needed was to align such practices and teachings with the legal framework guiding the fight.

Theme

It was under the theme: "Enhancing the role of faith-based and civil society organisations in the fight against corruption" and funded by DANIDA under its tax development programme.

Anti-corruption Manual

Mrs Addah and her team took the leaders through a step-by-step education of the recently launched manual on anti-corruption and how it could be accessible.

The manual, launched in Accra last month was to serve as guidelines for tackling of the menace.

She said while it was commendable that Ghana made a one-point improvement from 40 to 41 in the 2018 corruption barometer a lot more remained to be done.

"Ghana should be number or second in Africa when it comes to the fight against corruption and we need to do more to improve on our current ranking," she said.

The Programmes Manager said there was a need for the re-awakening of the values that the various faith bodies stood for.

"The focus on prosperity messages and get rich quick must be minimised and such energies redirected to hard work, diligence and integrity," she said.

Purpose

The training was to share knowledge, build capacities of key partners and empowering citizens.