Performance tracker is just a tool to score for political points instead of fighting corruption – GACC

Programmes Manager of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), Mr. Harrison Samuel, has described the government’s performance tracker as a political tool aimed at scoring political points.

He said the tracker and the National Democratic Congress’ green book are not different from each other.

He explained that, from an electoral point of view, the two were launched in an electioneering year to score political points.

He noted that in other jurisdictions, performance trackers are used to fight corruption.

However, the one launched by the NPP in Ghana is just a political tool to trump the so-called performance of the government instead of fighting corruption.

On April 10, the government the government launched a performance tracker that provides details of all government projects, their progress, and their locations since it came into power in 2017.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who presented the tracker, stated that “the tracker is a data base to showcase projects by the government.”

Reacting to the tracker, Mr. Harrison Samuel compared it to the Green Book, saying, “I think when looking at it from an electoral angle, they were both launched in an election year, and because of how they were used to track the performance of the two different governments, I cannot state categorically that they are different from each other. I’m not sure about that. They both used political tools to track the performance of the two governments, rather than something we could use to fight corruption. So I think they are all about the same thing.”

On the fight against corruption, he said Ghana is performing poorly.

Despite the existence of various institutions aimed at combating corruption, they are reportedly on the rise instead of reducing their prevalence, he argued.

He added that the corruption report for 2023 done by his outfit has pointed out clearly that “everything is telling us that the fight against corruption has not been the best. When you examine our corruption perception index and our scores, you will realise that we have performed poorly. When you look at the Auditor General’s report, the amount of money we are losing through infractions is increasing. At a rate that we should rather look at these infractions as reducing, our cases are increasing.

When you also look at the challenges confronting the Office of Special Prosecutor in relation to its cases and the weaknesses in the law that established the OSP, we thought the government would add to them, but it has not done anything about it. The government has also not responded to the poor performance index scores and how they are helping to fight against corruption.”