Fines to be Reviewed Upwards

Accra (Greater Accra) 29 July ?99

Cabinet has approved a "Fines (Penalty Units) Bill" which seeks to index fines to the going currency rate rather than express them in absolute cedi terms, thus automatically reviewing them upwards to accord with the deterrent intent of the law.

For instance, under the proposed bill, fines of 20,000 cedis and 100,000 cedis as found in PNDCL 229 are the equivalent of 10 and 50 penalty units respectively, which equal 200,000 cedis and one million cedis.

Mr Francis Korbieh, a Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural

Development who announced this in Parliament on Wednesday, said fines expressed in cedis in existing enactments are to be converted into penalty units whose conversion will be done according to a formula in the bill.

The Deputy Minister was responding to a question by Mr Kwakye Addo,

NDC-Afram Plains South, who wanted to know the steps being taken by the ministry to place before Parliament proposals to review upwards fines prescribed by the Control and Prevention of Bushfires Law, 1990, PNDCL 229.

Mr Korbieh said the low level of fines provided for in PNDCL 229 is not an isolated statutory problem and cannot be treated in isolation.

An earlier attempt to resolve the problem holistically under PNDCL 251 did not succeed because that law exempted from its ambit fines imposed by pre-1991 enactments and also suffered from the same 'obsolete cedi fines prescribed in laws like PNDCL 229.