The Coalition of Civil Society Groups has urged President Nana Akufo-Addo to publicly declare his assets.
According to the group, led by Prof Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), although the president has declared his assets as stipulated by law, making them public will help the fight against corruption because it will serve as an encouragement to his appointees to follow suit.
The coalition which paid a call on the president on Wednesday, 16 August, also urged the president to make the declaration “independently verifiable” and also expand the law to include any “politically-exposed persons” to declare their assets.
Article 286 (1) of the 1992 Constitution stipulates that: “A person who holds public office to submit to the Auditor General a written declaration of all property and assets owned by or liabilities owed by him directly or indirectly.”
This is done while in office and after leaving office. The law, however, does not allow the declaration to be made public.
The CSOs believe that law must be amended to make it mandatory for the assets declared to be made public.
The call by the CSOs comes two days after Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelevo, said the asset declaration process for public officials in Ghana, in its current form, is not effective at fighting graft and has described it as a “complete joke”.
The constitution mandates public officials to fill a form disclosing their assets upon assumption and exiting of office. The document is, however, sealed until a time that it is needed.
Mr Domelevo holds the view that even when public officials fill the form, there is no way of verifying that the information provided is authentic. Furthermore, the information on the form is not made public, hence it is a way of hiding assets of public officials.
Mr Domelevo was speaking at a roundtable organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on Tuesday, 15 August on the theme: “Fighting Corruption in the Public Sector of Ghana: The Role of assets declaration”.
He was of the view that the country should scrap the current arrangement as it serves no purpose and advised that a more robust and effective system be adopted to fight public sector corruption.
In Mr Domelevo’s view, the current assets declaration regime is rather a means “for asset concealment”.
“How one can just look at the [asset declaration] form and relate it to [actual] assets which are kilometres away?” the Auditor-General wondered.
He said bank accounts provided on the forms by officials do not have printed bank statements attached as proof.
According to him, the whole arrangement does not help in getting accurate information on what public officials own, neither does it help to prevent graft, hence another system should be implemented.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
