Fight Corruption With �Action�, Not �Committees� � Emile Short Tells Pez Mahama

Justice Francis Emile Short says President John Mahama�s Government must fight corruption with �action� and not through �committees�. The former head of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) said Tuesday that it is important corruption is attacked head on. In the past few months, scandals involving the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) and the Ghana Revenue Agency (GRA) have popped up. SADA is alleged to have frittered Ghc45 million of poverty reduction funds on non-existent guinea fowl and afforestation projects in the Northern parts of Ghana. GYEEDA is alleged to have flushed over Ghc200 million down the toilet by diverting those funds into private pockets in dubious dealings under various modules of the youth employment programme. A presidential taskforce recently indicted 280 private and public institutions and companies in a Ghc700 million tax evasion scandal at bonded warehouses. The fraud was perpetrated with the connivance of customs officials at the GRA. The same GRA is alleged to have paid Ghc144 million to IT firm Subah Info Solutions for mobile phone traffic monitoring services which were allegedly never rendered. Various Committees have been set up to probe all these scandals. However, Justice Short says the Government must move beyond setting up committees to investigate its own officials but rather punish the culprits. He said elsewhere in the world, corrupt public officials are held accountable through prosecution and imprisonment and wondered why the situation is so different in Ghana. ��There�s very little accountability in our society, so all these committees, what people want to see is action. If people have been implicated in corrupt activities, they should be arrested, prosecuted and let us see the end of it�, Justice Short said. He argues that �effective investigations and prosecution� are �the greatest deterrents� because corruption has to be a �high risk� and a �low gain� activity. ��If people think that the risk is not high [they get corrupt] because those who engage in corruption, they calculate the risks and the benefits so we have to make corruption a high risk activity and a low gain one�, the former CHRAJ boss counseled on Joy FM.