Individual Resolve Can Help Fight Corruption

CORRUPTION is everybody’s fight. It affects every facet of national life.

And in our case where money parts ways for every conceivable service, it will be preposterous to say only judges, politicians and top public servants take bribes. Ordinary workers and citizens take their due.

That is why as part of the campaign to ensure integrity in public service, the Second Republic introduced the slogan; “Don’t pay money to anybody, it is bribery and corruption”.

To succeed in the fight against corruption, the state should make it a process instead of an event where we highlight corrupt practices such as the alleged involvement of some judges in corrupt practices, the expose on CEPS officials and cocoa smugglers.

Unless integrity issues become the central focus of ensuring accountability in all facets of public life, we shall be touching the surface of the issues rather than dealing with the root causes.

The Daly Graphic believes that the system where nobody is motivated to pay anybody for services that are not supposed to be paid for must be made to work.

We all know that most services such as the acquisition of passports, birth certificates, drivers’ licences, business registration and admissions to senior high schools and other educational institutions are by and large paid for by those who demand those services.

Corruption will only be nipped in the bud when officials charged with the responsibility of offering those services to the public do so without collecting a pesewa but only work for their legitimate wages paid from taxpayers’ money.

We appeal to all to join in the crusade, indeed ‘jihad’, to weed out all the corrupt elements in the system for currently, it appears people are engaged in a dog’s fight where everybody tries to cut corners in order to survive.

If all the ‘labourers’ do their work as expected of them without demanding a pesewa or creating the conditions for the payment of bribes, the system will offer equal opportunities to all without considering a person’s status in life.

As things stand now, it is not only justice that is on sale. Even prayers, which Jesus Christ offered for free, is being sold by some charlatans masquerading as men of God described in certain circles as “Merchants of God”.

Now the struggle for survival has killed patriotic instincts in most Ghanaians, to the extent that the ordinary people find it difficult to survive in our society.

Something ought to be done if our country is to make headway and that is the collective resolve of all never to pay bribes for any public service in Ghana.

Source: Daily Graphic