Pressure organization OccupyGhana is worrying that President Nana Akufo-Addo calls “an emergency Cabinet assembly for the only motive of approving the draft 2022 behaviour of public officials invoice”.
“When the Bill receives to Parliament, we have the desire to make submissions at the elements affecting assertion of property and liabilities and advise approaches to make the provisions of the one better, more potent and less attackable than they currently are”, OccupyGhana stated in a declaration.
The advocacy follows current revelations regarding the property of the overdue CEO of the Forestry Commission, Mr Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, who, in step with an alleged leaked will, bequeathed a few nation lands to his relatives.
Read OccupyGhana’s complete declaration below:
OCCUPYGHANA PRESS STATEMENT
OCCUPYGHANA DEMANDS QUICK PASSAGE OF THE 2022 CONDUCT OF PUBLIC OFFICERS BILL INTO LAW
OccupyGhana has sooner or later received a replica of the draft 2022 Conduct of Public Officers Bill.
This draft Bill proposes, amongst others, to put off the unconstitutional extension of time given to public officials to claim property and liabilities, something that OccupyGhana has campaigned for and demanded nicely for over 5 years.
We are glad that the draft Bill seems prepared to be submitted to Cabinet for approval earlier than its miles despatched to Parliament for passage into regulation.
We call for the President calls an emergency Cabinet assembly for the only motive of approving the draft Bill. When the Bill receives to Parliament, we have the desire to make submissions on the elements affecting the assertion of property and liabilities and advise approaches to make the provisions of the one better, more potent and less attackable than they currently are.
Currently, Ghanaians are faced, as soon as again, with the in all likelihood state of affairs of an inexplicable acquisition of property via way of means of a public officer, who it seems, additionally did now no longer claim his property and liabilities. This is feasible due to the fact even though the Constitution categorically needs that humans being appointed to the public workplace “SHALL” claim their property “BEFORE TAKING OFFICE,” in 1998, politicians from all of the political events in Parliament, conspired to breach this constitutional provision via way of means of passing a regulation (Act 550) that lets in the assertion to be filed up to six months “AFTER” taking workplace.
The impact of this travesty is that for extra than decades, as soon as human beings expect a public workplace without first maintaining property and liabilities, they both do now no longer claim at all, or once in a while have interaction in “assumptive declarations” via way of means of maintaining what they do now no longer have, in the expectation that they might, at the same time as in the workplace, gather the property or make sham bills in the purported pleasure of sham money owed declared.
The workplace of the Auditor-General has been the leading facilitator of this grand conspiracy via way of means of again and again failing to audit or affirm the declarations whilst they're made.
It is probably recalled that it took a proper call via way of means of OccupyGhana dated 30 January 2018 for even a few elected officials of the Audit Service itself to scramble to claim their property and liabilities.
The tries via way of means of former Auditor-General, Mr Daniel Domelevo, to computerise the property assertion device to facilitate less complicated audit and verification seems to have left the workplace with him. That is why OccupyGhana will call for the Bill to present the transition from the paper-primarily based declarations to an automatic device within 12 months of its passage.
On 1 December 2019, after approximately years of campaigning on this issue, OccupyGhana officially wrote to the Attorney-General and demanded the repeal of the unconstitutional extension. On eight January 2020, the Attorney-General wrote to talk settlement with our function, promising to begin paintings at the repeal. Our reminders were on sixteen July and 24 September 2021 went unheeded. On 21 October 2021, we wrote to the Special Prosecutor, inviting him to enrol in our marketing campaign in this matter. He answered to talk about his settlement with our function and the repeal demanded too.
Since the energy to repeal that regulation is vested in best Parliament, under a Bill submitted via way of means of the Executive, we have been powerless to do whatever approximately this on our own, withinside the face of repeated, blatant and unpunished breaches of the Constitution in this matter, brief of going to courtroom docket.
But as we mulled over courtroom docket action, we obtained this replica of the 2022 draft Bill, displaying that the Attorney-General is certainly looking for a brand new regulation that contains our number one problem and revokes the criminally illogical interpretation of the word ‘BEFORE’ to mean ‘AFTER.’
We are reliably knowledgeable that the draft Bill is looking ahead to Cabinet approval earlier than its miles submitted to Parliament. We do now no longer recognize why that Cabinet approval ought to be delayed. The repeal of this longstanding unconstitutionality, blot at the countrywide moral sense and gateway to corruption, is lengthy overdue. Cabinet can not be visible be pussyfooting around this issue. We trust that we communicate for the massive majority of Ghanaians whilst we call for that:
(1)?the President summons an emergency cupboard assembly for the only motive of approving the draft Bill;
(2)?the Attorney-General presents a clean timeline whilst he's going to publish the Bill to Parliament;
(3)?Parliament guarantees that it passes the Bill into regulation earlier than it rises for the long vacation.
We have posted a replica of the draft Bill on our website (https://occupyghana.com/2022/05/behavior-of-public-officials-invoice-2022/) so that everyone involved in Ghanaians could have to get right of entry to it and have the ability to take part meaningfully withinside the approaching debate on its provisions.
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