The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said transparency is the right way to reduce the high rate of corruption in Ghana.
According to Bawumia, even though corruption cannot be eradicated completely from the system, building strong institutions and putting in place right systems and practices will ensure transparency which will go a long way to fight corrupt practices and bring about efficiency.
Speaking at the 2022 edition of the Annual Conference of the Institute of Internal Auditors (Ghana) in Accra on Thursday 5th May, 2022, the Vice President said the government is determined to fight against corruption hence the infusion of digitalization in the provision of government services which is beginning to yield major results, with even more interventions planned to fight the menace even harder.
“Government is very, very committed” to the fight against corruption, and will continue to infuse digitalization into the operations of state institutions to ensure more transparency.
“Building strong institutions means putting in place the right systems and practices that ensure transparency and brings about efficiency. With this, although corruption may remain a chronic disease, transparency will be its vaccine to reduce the rate of spread. As the saying goes, our biggest disease is corruption and the vaccine is transparency. Corrupt people hate transparency,” he indicated.
He added that the government has since 2017 ensured the deployment of technology and digitalization with the twin aim of ensuring easier, affordable access, and as an anti-corruption strategy.
“I would like to draw your attention to where we are as a country in our digitalisation process. We have made tremendous progress in building the digital infrastructure that serves as the bedrock for our digitalised economy as part of the paradigm shift in our economic transformation.
“We approached the building of this digital infrastructure on the key pillars of standardising individual identification using the Ghana Card; solving the address and property systems using GhanaPostGPS; solving under-banking and bringing financial inclusion to most people through a robust mobile money and bank interoperability and digital payment platform; and integration of Government Databases and digitising public service delivery using the Ghana.gov platform.”
“Already, we are seeing the impacts of these initiatives including efficient public service delivery by all Ministries, Departments and Agencies on the Ghana.gov portal, combatting corruption by removing the middle-man and “ghost names” in many transactions, bringing more Ghanaians into the formal sector, and driving domestic revenue mobilization, among others.
“If you take the Passport Office for instance, in 2017 there were about 16,000 applications for passports generating about Ghs1m. But with the advent of digitization, there were over 498,000 online applications in 2021, generating over Ghs56m. Similar things are happening at the DVLA, the ports, and other institutions.
“Recently, due to the introduction of e-tickets, we recorded the highest gate proceeds from a football match in Ghana. We will continue to shine the light of transparency in all aspects of national life.”
