Treating corruption as a high-risk activity – Adwoa Safo

General News of Monday, July 15, 2019

Source: kasapafmonline.com

2019-07-15

Sarah Adwoa Safo, Minister of State for Public Procurement, urged anti-corruption stakeholders to redouble efforts to counter the threat by making this threat a high-risk activity in the country. country.

Such a bold initiative, she noted, will strengthen the country's procurement system, which has recorded higher percentages of malfeasance in the Auditor General's report on ministries, departments and agencies.

"I want to say that the Auditor General's report presents about 80% of her findings regarding procurement irregularities. This is very disturbing. To reach Ghana beyond Aid, we need to strengthen our procurement systems by making corruption a high-risk activity and punishing civil servants. It will dissuade a lot of people, "she said.

According to her, government procurement in Ghana represents roughly 70% of expenditures, which represents a portion of the country's total gross domestic product (GDP).

However, conflicts of interest, collusion and frauds constitute a major threat to the judicious use of public funds, a situation that has been highlighted, must be minimized, if not eliminated altogether.

She thinks this will defeat the government's efforts to reach Ghana beyond the aid goals.

L & # 39; Hon. Adwoa Safo, who is also the first woman head of parliament in Ghana's parliament, made the remarks on Saturday when she addressed a welcoming note to the leaders of Parliament and the leaders of various committees of Parliament in a two-day workshop. days in Koforidua.

Committees include finance, roads and transport, public works and housing, public accounts, health, local government and rural development, communications and defense.

The others are mining and energy, trade, tourism and education.

The theme of the workshop was "Improving Parliamentary Control through Public Procurement".

Commenting further, she said Ghanaians should be alarmed by Transparency International's (TI) current report on Ghana, which reports corruption in all sectors of government and urges people to work to address it. ;to come up.

Nevertheless, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said that corruption in procurement, collusion and fraud undermine development, should be a warning to all.

The first vice-speaker of Parliament, the Hon. Joseph Osei Owusu, who delivered the keynote address, recalled a number of instances where the country has failed to block all the loopholes that people exploit to make a lot of money at the expense of l & # 39; 39; State.

For example, he stated that the Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act No. 663) mandates each member of Parliament to sit on the board of the procurement entity of the Assembly. However, this provision of the Public Procurement Act has been neglected, providing fertile ground for some actors in the procurement process to abuse the system.

Dishonesty

Another very critical issue in the fight against corruption in the buying process, according to the Hon. The first vice-president, who is also a member of Parliament for Bekwai, is dishonest.

"The biggest challenge we face as a country is how to manage our dishonesty. And that is what feeds all these discussions. I dare say that there is not a single person who does not know the rules or laws on public procurement – that this person applies as an entrepreneur or agent. If the rules are circumscribed and he wins the contract, he is a valuable man, but if he does not win, the person who won paid a bribe or the officer accepted a pot. -of-wine. If this same officer bypbades the rule tomorrow and gets the contract, the story changes, "he said.

He added, "The worst thing is our political activists. He or she believes that because he is a party activist, he must automatically benefit from his party in power, regardless of whatever he wants, and yet he will turn around to accuse another of being corrupted when the things will turn around. We have to face it as a country.

Reforms

The leader of the minority, the Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, for his part, said that in order for the country to reduce corruption as much as possible, it needed to undertake a number of reforms. One of these reforms, he noted, is for legislators to change the way in which they evaluate the contract documents submitted to them for consideration and make recommendations to the plenary for approval.

Another reform, he suggested in the Public Procurement Law, is the issue of political interference and favoritism in procurement.

"Mr President, one of the main weaknesses of Ghana 's public procurement law is political interference and political patronage, and today, if you are an NDC entrepreneur, you are the only one of your kind. have no business when the nuclear power plant makes a decision and when you are a plant contractor, you have no business when the NDC makes a decision.The essence of the law on public procurement was to provide the judicious use of public resources in order to protect it in a non-discriminatory manner, and let anyone in this room deny me that our public procurement process is discriminatory and I say it without fear or contradiction.This needs to be corrected. why we can not develop businesses – your business wealth is tied to a political administration in power – it is a national wrong that we commit as a ys and we must strive to see if we can fix it, "he said.

In addition, he said late payments by contractors and suppliers were a major setback in the procurement process, calling on lawmakers to play a leading role in the fight against this phenomenon.