DVLA is the most corrupt in Kumasi - GII study

The most corrupt public body in the Kumasi metropolis is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), a Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) survey has revealed.

The study was designed to estimate the level of knowledge of citizens, opinions of corruption as well as actual encounters with corrupt practices.

It spanned from April to May 2016. Results collated from the survey indicated that over 85.9 percent of the respondents were of the view that the DVLA was the most corrupt in Ghana’s second largest city.

Closely following the DVLA was the passport office; the private sector, public officials and the political parties followed in that order as the decreasingly corrupt.

To 59.7 percent of the respondents, the military was incorruptible, whilst 51.8 and 51 per cent said same about the media and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), respectively.

At a forum held in Kumasi, Samuel Harrison-Cudjoe, a research officer of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), presented the results to all gathered.

Present at the function were officials from the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), security agencies, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Judicial Service and religious bodies.

According to the report, 95 percent of the 40.3 per cent of people who made contact with the police reported paying bribe to the officers.

The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) also engaged 9.5 per cent of citizens within the last 12 months, of which 86.6 per cent paid bribe. He added that the report provided district-specific evidence as basis for engaging district level public institutions and stakeholders to help reduce corruption at the sub-national level.

Another study on corruption in the Asante-Akim Central Municipality recorded the police service as coming tops, followed by the judiciary and the Ghana Education Service (GES) in that order.

The Programmes Manager of GACC, Kwasi Boateng Asumeng, said that four out of every five people recorded in the survey had come into contact with the police for one reason or the other.

One third of the number self-confessed to paying bribe to the police. The survey was conducted in forty eight other selected districts across the ten regions. It forms part of the four-year United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded plan titled “Accountable Democratic Institutions and Systems Strengthening (ADISS)”.

The aim of ADISS is to renew and grow on-going efforts, as well as increasing the capabilities of anti-corruption civil society groups.

This is to help so citizens exercise their right to apply pressure on policy makers and bodies through a series of targeted and focused actions with the objective of reducing corruption.