Anti-corruption campaigners say the asset declaration law has become a cost instead of checking the harm of corruption myjoyonline/news/2014/December-13th/anti-graft-campaigners-say-asset-declaration-law-lacks-sense.php#sthash.AsEEcChD.dpuf Anti-corruption campaigners say the law on asset declaration has become a cost to the nation instead of checking the harm of corruption. According to Executive Secretary of the National Anti-corruption Coalition, Linda Ofori Kwafo and the Executive Director of Ghana Integrity Initiative, Vitus Azeem have described the law as “white elephant” thereby weighing negatively on the fight against corruption. The law on Asset Declaration mandates public office holders to submit to the Auditor-General, a written declaration of all assets as well as liabilities they owned, directly or indirectly, prior to taking office. However, Mr. Vitus Azeem is demanding an amendment to the law to make it binding on public officers to publish their assets other “putting the information in a [sealed] brown envelope and submitting them to the Auditor General”. Speaking Saturday on weekly news analysis programme, Newsfile, on the Joy News channel on Multi TV and broadcast live on Joy FM, Mr. Azeem described the current act (Act 550) as “a waste of public resources.” On her part, Mrs. Linda Ofori Kwafo said the present laws on anti-corruption are “weak”. She advocates the commitment of more resources to reinforce the laws to reduce opportunities for corruption and also to “break the corruption activities”. “Anytime I hear anything about the [Asset Declaration] law I go so mad [and] I get so disappointed as in why we have that law which is virtually doing nothing,” she remarked. Meanwhile, Presidential Advisor on Corruption, Daniel Batidam suggested the strategy to fight corruption should be institutionalized while benchmarks are set for public office holders in the performance of their duties. “If corruption is institutionalized then the fight against it must also be institutionalized…It is important that public officials are given bench marks to perform,” Mr. Batidam said.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 12:54:34 +0000