By Christabel Addo/ Emmanuel Donkor, GNA
Accra, April 5, GNA - STAR-Ghana has signed a grant agreement with 18 organisations after they had satisfied all the independent and budget assessments, as well as all due diligence requirements.
Mr Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, the Programme Director of STAR-Ghana, at the grant signing ceremony and the opening of a three-day orientation workshop for the beneficiaries in Accra, said over GH¢7.189 million had been awarded under the current funding project to the partner organisations, to execute various anti-corruption projects between a 12 to 24-month period depending upon the type of tasks to be undertaken.
He explained that the STAR-Ghana call on Anti-Corruption was to support and enhance the effectiveness of citizen, community, civil society initiatives and actions to fight the menace, and further support the testing of innovative approaches to collective and join up actions between non-state and state actors in the effort.
Based on the lessons learnt from an earlier project on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion and media calls, a portfolio approach was adopted in the implementation of the Anti-Corruption Call, which was grouped under four main components involving; the Strategic Influencing, Innovative Alliances, Small Grants as well as the Private sector.
Mr Amidu said while the Strategic Influencing would target how to strategically influence policy to implement projects that were aimed at addressing systemic constraints, the Innovative Alliance on the other hand, would focus on advanced collaboration amongst Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and other stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness of anti-corruption actions.
The Small Grant component, however, supports anti-corruption actions at the districts and local levels, enabling citizen address locally salient corruption issues, particularly in accessing quality social services, he said.
The orientation workshop, he said, would provide a platform for successful applicants to better understand STAR-Ghana’s Theory of Change and Logframe, and how they relate to their projects, clarify expectations before the project commences for better understanding of the reporting requirements, and also set the tone with key anti-corruption stakeholders within the sector.
Mr Joseph Whittal, the Commissioner for Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), lauded STAR-Ghana for its support to the CSOs and private sector business associations under its anti-corruption Call.
He said the support had come at a good time when the country was battling with addressing the serious menace that was retrogressing its development, and urged the beneficiaries to take advantage of the current political, especially with the establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, to address corruption issues.
He said unless government, CSOs and private institutions collaborated in the fight against corruption, it would be difficult to fully eradicate the canker, citing the country’s present negative record status per the 2017 Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
Mr Whittal said negative results of the 2017 CPI, indicated that 40 out of the 100 percent (a drop from 43 per cent) of the people, still perceived corruption as a huge problem, and that actual sanctions and prosecution against it remained weak.
He said presently the participation of private institutions and civil society has not been encouraging as expected, adding that, the submission of reports on and implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP) had also been lower than expected even with the media.
He challenged CSOs, the media, state and non-state actors to improve upon their implementation of NACAP as a tool and an executive document, to fight corruption and further, to ensure that they submitted regular reports of their assessments to the Commission, to inform national policy and decisions.
Mrs Diana Quashie, representing the Funder’s Committee, urged the beneficiary organisations to take advantage of the support to deliver projects that would achieve results, saying, the donors must be assured that their respective taxpayers investments were making the expected impacts and demonstrating value for money.
Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye, the Chair of the STAR-Ghana Steering Committee, said the project was a continuous dialogue between the citizenry and government, and to complement existing ones aimed at addressing the current negative corruption perception that had the potential of creating a mockery of the country’s good governance system.
She thanked the Project Management Team for their hard work in the selection process, and urged the beneficiaries to be very innovative in the execution of their projects, while forming stronger partnerships and collaborations to achieve results.
It was expected that by the end of the projects the citizen’s appetite for corruption would no longer exist, as they would have fully understood what constituted the canker and the evidence that it does not facilitate national development, she said.
Mr Samuel Akuamoah, the Deputy Chair in Charge of Operations at the National Commission on Civic Education, said Ghana appeared to be losing the fight against corruption, and called for strengthened collaborations, building of synergies, avoiding duplication, and forming partnerships, to succeed in reversing the trend.
He also advocated the need to target behavioural changes by targeting the youth and re-orienting them through civic education in the school curriculum and involving them in anti-corruption campaigns, to change their perceptions to bring about the expected change.
STAR-Ghana is governance and accountability programme, which supports civil society to strengthen and enable citizens engage with the state and with government to ensure accountability, transparent and responsive governance at both local and national levels.
GNA
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS