The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), has challenged the citizenry to be bold to report cases of corruption and suspected acts of corruption within their localities without any fear of victimisation.
It said corruption had become adaptive,it had grown, changed alongside the world systems and needed to be tackled head-on by reporting cases instead thinking of victimisation.
“This can only be done if citizens are willing to report cases also while encouraging Ghanaians to develop an interest in reporting people who are involved in corrupt practices,corruption does not occur only amongst politicians and people in authority but everywhere in society,” GII noted.
Awelana Addah,the programmes Manager at GII,was worried over how corruption as was known did no longer happen in the “dark” but was now practiced in the open and happened everywhere involving everyone.
She was speaking at a stakeholder engagement in Tamale organised by GII in collaboration with Ghana Developing Communities Association and SEND-Ghana to empower the citizenry to be able to demand probity, transparency and accountability from leadership.
Mrs Addah explained that it was not only in the political offices or public institutions that corruption happens, it happens even in homes, churches and schools and lamented that corruption no longer happened in the dark but inbroad daylight.
She indicated that the most worrying of it was corruption was now adaptive, as the world changes, its acts also change and alleged that people took bribes through MoMo since technology and corruption could be termed as bedfellows.
“Citizens should at all-time demand probity, accountability and transparency from authority both from the local assemblies and central government and report same to the appropriate institutions if they have any suspicions and the whistleblowers’ act protects every citizen who reports corrupt cases so we should not be scared to blow the whistle,” Mrs Addah stressed.
Alhaji Osman Abdel-Rahaman, the Executive Director of Ghana Developing Communities Association, whose outfit conducted research on the level of corruption in five District Assemblies in the Northern Region, cautioned that corruption at the local level was on the rise in recent times and all Ghanaians were needed on board to be able to tackle the menace.
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