VICE PRESIDENT Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has affirmed the government’s commitment to the fight against corruption, asserting that the Akufo-Addo administration is eliminating the incentives for bribery and corruption in the country.
He said bribery has debilitating effects on national development and domestic resource mobilisation by complicating enforcement efforts on the part of tax authorities.
“People, who are supposed to collect revenues for the government, steal from the government when cash is paid. People do not file their taxes,” Dr. Bawumia noted at the 59th Annual Session of the Ghana Baptist Convention at Ejura in the Ashanti Region on Tuesday.
He asserted that the government was using digitisation to promote efficient public sector management, public services delivery and eliminate the incentives for bribery and corruption.
“You fight corruption with systems; you do not fight corruption with rhetoric. And so, in this regard, we have been trying to put systems in place. We’re trying to identify everybody uniquely, and that is why we’re issuing the Ghana Card.
“Every property has a digital address. Today, there is no need to pay a bribe for your passport. No ‘goro’ boys are involved in passport acquisition. You go online and you pay for it; and it can even be delivered to your house,” he pointed out.
The Vice President stated that the acquisition of driver’s licence had been made simple, intimating, “It is one of the most advanced systems that we have implemented in the world, and therefore, you don’t need any ‘goro’ boy to get a driver’s licence.”
He explained that the Akufo-Addo government’s digitisation agenda is putting in place systems and policies that are designed to shine the light of transparency into the “dark corners that breed corruption while aggressively accelerating national development.”
For him, corruption thrives in “the very nature of the society that we have. It thrives in any society that is full of darkness. So much so that when there is darkness so much is hidden; you cannot tell who is who.”
“In a society where you have this type of darkness prevailing, when you cannot tell the identity of a person, then corruption can thrive. One can even go and borrow money from a bank and later change their name and then go to another bank to borrow.
“You have no sense of where people are or finding where they are because address systems do not exist. So banks charge high interest rates,” he posited.
Dr. Bawumia said the dark nature of the Ghanaian society had bred “general indiscipline” in the system, making some people always trying to register minors to vote “because it is full of darkness, there is no transparency and therefore corruption thrives.”
According to him, corruption does not only inhibit economic growth and affect business operations, employment and investments, but it also hinders the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
Dr. Bawumia bemoaned the effects of corruption, adding that it “reduces tax revenue and the effectiveness of various financial assistance programmes.”
“The wider society is influenced by a high degree of corruption in terms of lowering of trust in the rule of law, governance and consequently the quality of life,” he noted.
He, however, reported that the results of digitalisation had been remarkable so far, adding, “This government is building a system that will enhance transparency, promote accountability, discipline, trustworthiness and enable inclusiveness.”
BY Ernest Kofi Adu