From Richard Owusu-Akyaw, Kumasi.. The Forum for Christians against Corruption (FoFCAC) has noted that the newly-built Community Day Schools is a noble idea, but, at the moment, is a potential source for corruption. According to FoFCAC, being day schools, the government would have to immediately convert the majority of them (in deprived rural locations) […]
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From Richard Owusu-Akyaw, Kumasi..
The Forum for Christians against Corruption (FoFCAC) has noted that the newly-built Community Day Schools is a noble idea, but, at the moment, is a potential source for corruption.
According to FoFCAC, being day schools, the government would have to immediately convert the majority of them (in deprived rural locations) into boarding schools to make them viable.
Rev. Dr. Kojo Osei-Wusu, interim President of FoFCAC, a newly-formed Christian organisation by a group of Grace Baptist Church members, with the vision of working to help build a corruption-free Ghana, said FoFCAC seeks to officially present the agenda to whichever government is formed after the elections, and continue with strict and continuous monitoring of the government’s performance, with reference to the agenda.
He explained at a news conference in Kumasi a couple of days ago that even where private rental housing facilities are available, many Ghanaian parents would find it uncomfortable to have their wards (ages between 12 and 15) live in such communities without any supervision, as they attend school.
He charged the incoming government to make corruption unattractive to Ghanaians, and suggested that two considerations must become paramount in the approaches for fighting the menace, to achieve that deserved end.
The group said governments should demonstrate credible intent and political will in the fight, by focusing consistently, as a priority, on the very common day corrupt practices that victimise the ordinary person, and which seem to have been accepted as the norm in our Ghanaian society.
Examples of such acts include public workplace corruption, the corruption in our educational system, as well as road and highway corruption involving the police.
FoFCAC is convinced that failure of successive governments to give due attention to fighting corruption holistically, justifies the need for future governments to be helped to succeed, through a monitored anti-corruption agenda that can be executed with accountable results.
Dr. Osei-Wusuh expressed concerned about growing corruption in the Ghanaian society, and noted that the failure of successive governments to give due attention to fighting corruption holistically, it justifies the need for future governments to be helped to succeed, through a monitored anti-corruption agenda.
Digging deeper into corruption in Ghana, Rev.Osei-Wusuh, a board member of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), stated: “There has, for ages, been in existence serious corruption, which is now endemic in our pre-tertiary educational system, through repeated examination leakages, and mostly, with the connivance of schools and parents.
According to FoFCAC, “The nation has looked on for years, in apparent hopelessness, while the corruption canker continues to rattle the system into tatters, the quality of both its development and its products. No serious government can afford any longer to put this nagging problem on the back burner, but to demonstrate the necessary political will to effectively deal with the problem of corruption in the system.”
Taking on the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), he said the examination body should be pressurised to adopt processes with better transparency and improved security, than currently exists, while its officials cited for complicity in examination question leakages are severely sanctioned, to serve as a deterrent to others.
A lot more emphasis will also need to be placed on continuous assessment of students, instead of one-time pass or fail examinations.
The retired Baptist Prelate suggested that corruption within the nation’s educational system should be tackled from the point of view of the annual SHS admissions/placement system, and its attendant corrupt ‘protocol’ concept. “Whatever needs to be done, must be done, to curtail the ordinary Ghanaian parent being compelled to pay huge amounts of bribes to secure placement for their wards in schools,” the group suggested.
Commenting on Public Workplace Corruption, FoFCAC said: “Acts of extortion of money and payment of bribes in exchange for public workplace services that should be free, have become the normal daily experience of the ordinary person in the Ghanaian community.
“It should be incumbent upon any government in Ghana, committed to truly fighting corruption, to target, as a major starting point, the elimination of workplace corruption, through every means possible, that may include: Commitment to the e-governance project aimed at simplifying access to public services, reducing the human contact points, red-tapism, Sustained public educational campaign, including posters at public places on corrupt acts, their adverse effects, the need to resist them, and how to report them, Ensuring more transparency in the cost of public services, and how long it should take one to access them.”
He indicated: “The daily open display of acts of bribery and extortion that involve the police and motorists on our roads, have, unfortunately, become accepted as the norm, and the source of many street jokes, which should not be glossed over by a nation which claims to abhor corruption and is committed to fighting it.”
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