By Florence Afriyie Mensah
Kumasi, July 10, GNA – Trade union members in education, health, public administration and agriculture, as well as some civil society organizations, have stressed the need for transparency and fairness in the activities of public sector institutions that regulate their business operations.
According to the union members, if regulators in these sectors continued to be corrupt, business operations would stagnate and fail to generate the dividends the country needs.
Mr Thompson Appam Attebila, Ashanti and Bono Ahafo Regional Manager of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) explained that misappropriation and corrupt acts in public institutions affected private businesses because it was the public institutions that regulated the private sector.
“All activities that one must perform will have to rely on the public sector.
So if activities undertaken at this level are not done to promote businesses in the private sector, it affects operations greatly”, he stated.
Mr Attebila speaking at an engagement with CSO coalitions, trade unions and pressure groups to support anti-corruptions actions in Kumasi, said the laws of the country should be simple and transparent so that anybody could understand and stand for their rights.
The meeting was put together by Transparency International in collaboration with the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC).
Nana Akwasi Prempeh, President of the Federation of Kumasi Traders, noted that traders encountered numerous challenges and that often pushed them to pay government officials to pave their ways through.
He stressed the need for fairness in the adjudication of issues affecting all citizens in the country.
He explained that practice had been that those in the upper class were given preferential treatment when accessing services in the public sector, forcing the lower class to push their way through by paying bribes before they were attended to.
Nana Prempeh called for proper mechanisms to ensure that the state agencies worked in a transparent manner to prevent people from paying for the services meant to be free of charge.
Again, he said the education on corruption must be decentralized for people to get the imports of corruption and do things the right way.
Mr Michael Kwame Boadi, Fundraising Manager at Transparency International, tasked unions to monitor government activities and public services for potential corruption and report findings to relevant authorities.
Ghana’s performance on global indicators such as the corruption perception index published by the Transparency International shows a stagnation in scores since 2020.
This indicates that the country is not making progress in the fight against corruption.
The stakeholders meeting therefore sought to create inclusive space for dialogue among various actors to share best practices and co-ordinate anti-corruption efforts across regions.
GNA
July 10, 2025
Edited by Kwabia Owusu-Mensah/Kenneth Odeng Adade