Go Beyond Declaration Of Intent - CHRAJ Top Official Tells Politicians

The Director of Anti-Corruption Department of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Mr Charles Ayamdoo, has asked political leadership to go beyond public declaration of their intention to fight corruption and put in place robust mechanisms to deal with the canker.

He said that required allocation of resources to strengthen the structures of anti-corruption institutions and building of the human resource capacity of bodies with the mandate to prosecute reported cases of corruption.

"There is the urgent need to ensure that legislations are implemented in a holistic manner while efforts must be made to provide the resources that are needed to tackle the menace of corruption properly, including the building of human resource capacity of stakeholders, " he added.

At an anti- corruption stakeholders' forum in Accra last Thursday, Mr Ayamdoo said the fight against corruption was herculean one that required partnership and cooperation at the national and international levels.

Forum

The forum was under the auspices of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) and brought together participants from institutions such as CHRAJ, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) and the Judicial Service.

The purpose of the forum was to garner institutional support and inter-institutional collaboration to fight corruption efficiently.

Setbacks

Mr Ayamdo observed that even though the country had quite a good number of legislative frameworks to fight corruption, lack of a strong enforcement and sanction regimes, inadequate safe reporting mechanisms, and lack of public education had stifled the fight against the canker.

"There should be a system in place to recover proceeds criminal and corrupt acts from perpetrators.

"We should not create an incentive for political office holders and other people to explore opportunities to corrupt, because corruption is a system that must be fought with a system in the interest of national development, "he said.

Mr Ayamdoo further stated that the posture of investigative institutions coupled with the bureaucratic regimes they operated did not motivate the public to blow the whistle on corrupt practices.

"Over politicisation of corruption and crime in the country is a major setback to the fight against corruption because it weakens capacity of the mandated institutions to fight the canker.

Post regime prosecutions

Touching on the challenges in fighting the menace, a senior associate of the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA), Mr Tuinese Amuzu, said the situation where prosecution of political office holders only began after they had left office was quite problematic.

"As a result of the lapses in the fight against corruption, especially, on political officials, we do not even verify the funding sources of political party campaigns," he said.

He said the continuous reliance on colonial institutional set ups was a disincentive to the fight against corruption.

Mr Amuzu observed that the way forward was for action to be expedited on prosecution of a backlog of criminal and corruption cases at anti-corruption institutions to engender public confidence.

"There is the need to strengthen ethical individual and strong collaboration between civil society organisations (CSOs) and state and public institutions to comprehensively fight corruption,” he added.

The programmes manager of GII, that the anti-corruption body had rolled out an Advocay and Legal Advice Centre (ALAC), a platform to receive and respond to cases of corruption from the public.

She said a working group comprising dedicated staff from anti-corruption institutions had been constituted to act as focal points to facilitate the efficient running of ALAC

source:Daily Graphic