The government of Ghana has initiated processes in Parliament towards making corruption a more unrewarding venture.
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice Gloria Akuffo has in this regard presented to Parliament the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
The bill when passed will make the punishment for corruption stiffer as such crimes will become felony instead of the current misdemeanor status.
It was laid today by the Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu.
The bill has subsequently been referred to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs for consideration and report.
Ghana’s anti-graft body, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), which is Transparency International’s Local Chapter, in 2019 warned that the country “loses close to US$3 billion to corruption annually,”.
The GII Executive Director Linda Ofori-Kwafo stressed that successive governments have attempted to minimise corruption through “moral crusades to uphold high ethics, the confiscation of properties found to have been acquired through corruption or public reforms,” but that there is still a long way ahead to fight the problem.