A total of GH₵ 6 million was spent in conducting the 2021 Ghana Integrity of Public Service Survey (GIPSS) – People’s Experiences and Views on Corruption Report, Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Anim, has disclosed.
Speaking on JoyNews last Friday and monitored by Ghanaian Times, Prof. Anim mentioned the survey had a component of the expenditure from the United Nation Office on Drugs and Corruption (UNODC) because of the technical support provided.
From the reports, it was noted that people with the highest level of education were 1.6 times more likely to pay bribes than people with no education, showing 24.4 percent as people with no formal education as against 38.4 per cent for people with tertiary education.
“With a prevalence of bribery of 38.4 per cent, Ghanaians with masters and degrees are more likely to have been asked to pay bribes than those with no formal education,” he stated.
Again, six out of 10 bribes paid to public officials were requested directly by those officials and almost half of all bribe-payers paid a bribe to either speed up or finalise an administrative procedure in 2021.
“Majority of bribes are directly requested by public officials and are paid in advance for a service because people seeking the service are informed by a public official, either implicitly or explicitly, that a procedure will not be processed without the payment of a bribe,” the report said.
According to the report, only three out of 100 people, representing 3.1 per cent, paid bribes in Ghana and reported it to an official or an unofficial institution.
Meaning 96.9 per cent of bribe payers did not report and the most common reason cited for not reporting was that bribery was simply a common practice and people thought it needless to report.
Prof. Anim advised that the situation needed to be addressed at the grass-roots level in terms of different institutions, sectors and geographical locations to ensure a meaningful end or a reduction.
The survey was conducted by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The survey collected evidence-based information from 15,000 households across the country involving people who were 18 years and older on the forms of corruption affecting the population of Ghana.
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