Social Auditing is effective Anti-Corruption Mechanism – NCCE

Ms Alice Ndego, the Bongo District Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has recommended social auditing as an effective anti-corruption enhancing mechanism to promote good governance and sustainable development.

She said social auditing, which employed the participatory approach, empowers the citizens and Civil society Organizations to demand accountability in the execution of public projects and the management of public resources.

This, she stated, would create community ownership of capital projects, increase their awareness in local governance, and thereby put duty bearers on their toes to deliver effectively and ensure transparency.

The District Director made the disclosure during a community engagement on social auditing organized by the NCCE at Namoo in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region.

The programme, which brought together stakeholders and the residents including Persons With Disabilities as well as traditional leaders, was to educate and sensitize them on their rights to demand accountability from their leaders to ensure good governance.

The event was on the theme, “Citizens for transparency and accountability.”

The District Director indicated that the objective for advocating social auditing was to promote good governance in Ghana by reducing corruption and improving on accountability and complying with the rule of law.

“It rests on the premise that when government officials are watched and monitored, they feel greater pressure to respond to their constituents’ demands and have fewer incentives to abuse their power,” she stressed.

“It is based on the premise that citizens want and have the right to know what the government does, how it does it, how it impacts on them and that the government has the obligation to account and be transparent to the citizens.”

Mr Andrews Nsobila, the Assemblyman for the Namoo Electoral Area, lauded the efforts of the NCCE for deepening democracy in the area and said it was in line with the Local Governance Act of 2016, Act 936 to bring governance to the doorsteps of the people.

He said in order for the social auditing to be an effective tool for development, central government needed to make a paradigm shift from awarding contracts of project meant for the communities directly from the top to giving the power to the local government authorities.

He said this would ensure that the District Assemblies had the oversight responsibility to supervise the projects adding that this would make the contractors deliver effectively.

Naba Alagtaaba Bingpeelom, the Chief of the Namoo Community admonished his subjects to see social auditing as a tool that should be used for effective development of the area and not a political tool for partisan gains.