‘Gov’t Officials Abusing Office, Depleting State Resources’ – NCCE Boss

The National Commission for Civic Education has expressed concern at the rate of abuse of power by government agencies and institutions.

Speaking at the 2nd National Dialogue on Public Accountability: Abuse of Office, the Chairperson of the Commission, Josephine Nkrumah lamented that abuse of power, as well as corruption, were depleting national resources.

According to Josephine Nkrumah, the rate at which some Government officials abused offices in the past led to widespread mediocrity in the public space as well as leading to a weakening of public institutions.

“These accepted norms and practices properly constituting abuse of office have led to mediocrity and the weakening of institutions…while stagnating national development. It costs the nation resources and money. It pronounces the vulnerability of public office that negates sound policies and takes away the objective of service delivery efficiency to drive socio-economic and democratic growth.”

Speaking at the same event the Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo, called for improvement in the laws and strict implementation of the rules to curb corruption. The Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo earlier this year expressed his disappointment at what he described as the decline in the quality of work undertaken by all kinds of Ghanaian professionals.

According to him, the standards in professions such as accounting, auditing, engineering and vocations such as tailoring and dressmaking have fallen low to the extent that Ghanaians prefer the services of expatriate professional workers.

He explained that the ‘fundamental’ problem of Ghanaians as it stands now is a lack of discipline.

“The quality of engineering hasn’t improved, the quality of almost everything is going down with more professions. Today, people want to put up a structure and they don’t want a Ghanaian, they are looking for someone else. There is something fundamentally wrong and that thing for me, is lack of discipline,” he said.