Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Senior Presidential Advisor has revealed that the declaration of assets should not be confidential.
Speaking at a stakeholder engagement of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra, Osafo-Maafo advocated for increased transparency in the declaration of assets owned by public officials, emphasising its critical role in bolstering accountability within Ghana’s governance framework.
Although public officials, including ministers of state and some employees of the public sector, are required by law to report their assets to the auditor general, Osafo-Maafo noted that the opaque nature of this process makes accountability difficult.
Although public officials, including ministers of state and some employees of the public sector, are required by law to report their assets to the auditor general, Osafo-Maafo noted that the opaque nature of this process makes accountability difficult.
Osafo-Maafo expressed displeasure with the existing asset declaration framework and emphasized that accountability and scrutiny are hampered by the secrecy upheld between the auditor general and specific persons.
“In Ghana, when you become a minister of state or a public sector worker at certain levels, the first thing you do is to declare your assets and file same to the auditor general. What I personally don’t like about this law is that after you declare your asset, everything is kept confidential between the auditor general and yourself and therefore, it becomes difficult for anybody to challenge the authenticity of the declaration.
“I think that we should declare the assets but there should be a certain level of transparency in the declaration of the assets so that people can assess what is declared by certain procedures.”
“I happened to be consulting for somebody when we were drawing up the constitution of the republic and I was championing the publication of the assets declared and the chiefs were so furious with me and said they would be killed when people knew what they had.”
Ghana | Atinkaonline.com | Vivian Adu
