Govt. accused of nepotism

Accra, July 19, GNA - Sixty-six per cent of 900 respondents interviewed in a survey have accused the government of its involvement in corrupt practices by considering party faithful in the award of contracts.

The survey report read on Tuesday by Mr Daniel Batidam, Executive Secretary of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), a local chapter of Transparency International, said 29 per cent and 19.3 per cent of respondents, respectively, also accused the government for not handling corruption very well or not at all.

However, 51.1 per cent of the respondents expressed belief that the government was committed to fight bribery and corruption.

The survey dubbed: "Urban Corruption Perception Survey" was conducted in Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and Accra-Tema areas between March 10 and March 26 this year.

Respondents were interviewed on their perceptions of corruption, personal involvement and other peoples' involvement in bribery and corruption.

It also underlined reasons for corruption, institutions and officials perceived to be affected by corruption and suggestions on how to deal with the problem.

The survey's findings indicated that most Ghanaians engaged in corrupt practices to enable them to get what they needed.

It mentioned that in order to avoid delays in acquiring what people needed, victims would rather pay some money to people to influence them to render a particular service to them.

According to the survey, 47.5 per cent of 457 respondents said they occasionally experienced bribery and corruption in their day-to-day activities while 33.3 per cent said they experienced them frequently.

Out of 665 respondents, 20.2 per cent said they witnessed corruption everyday, either as perpetrators or as victims, and that they showed little or no concern when they witnessed such practices since they would be branded "too known" when they tried to interfere.

Giving the reasons why respondents participated in corruption, 77.5 per cent of 457 respondents said they were forced by circumstances to be involved in corruption while 18.8 per cent said they offered money freely to be rendered services.

They expressed regret that the Police and Judicial Service, which were expected to help to control corruption, were rather the leading perpetrators of such negative acts.