[ 2014-11-21 ]

No difference between corruption and thievery - Elizabeth Ohene
It appears that the term ‘thief’ has been
reserved for the little people in society and
‘corruption’ reserved for the big people, at
least in the opinion of Elizabeth Ohene, a former
of Minister of State.

Speaking at Thursday’s Occupy Corruption event,
held at the Christ the King Hall in Accra, Ms.
Ohene insisted that the term corruption does not
serve its purpose anymore in Ghana.

Elizabeth Ohene explained that the Ghanaian
society knows what to do when some people help
themselves to something that does not belong to
them. She insisted that should a Ghanaian shout
thief, whether in english or any local language,
people would turn up with their stones, cudgels
and cutlasses to demand instant justice, “but if
you help yourself to millions of dollars, cedis
that belong to the people of Ghana they call it
corruption.

“It seems to me that stealing is for little
people, small people, and corruption is for the
big people", Ms. Ohene decried the situation in
which corrupt individuals are left free to reap
their spoils while petty thieves are prosecuted.

“When they say you’re corrupt, you’re
invited to be chairman of the church harvest and
when they say you’re a thief, you go to
jail.”

In her opinion, there is no difference between the
two categories of people and it is high time that
Ghanaians called the situation by its rightful
name; thievery, "Let’s call a spade a spade,"
she stressed.

She expressed the view that Ghana has enough rules
and laws to combat corruption, stating, “We have
enough rules in our books. If we would just ensure
that they work, we would be just fine”.

Ms. Ohene insisted that corruption is not an
African problem, explaining that she observed a
different situation when she covered a story in
Botswana at a time when the country was deficient
in expertise and relied on consultants from other
countries to help run its affairs.

She narrated the story of a Ghanaian appointee in
Botswana, who utilised his official vehicle for
unofficial activities and was billed for those
activities at the end of his two year tenure in
office.

“This is not the case in Ghana. Here, you can
use our official car to visit your girlfriend’s

house, to funerals and outdoorings, etc.”
The canker, seems to be entrenched quite deeply.
She has the example of how contractors and
quantity surveyors inflate costs for projects
based on the assumption that the government will
not pay them their agreed amounts on time.
She expressed the worrying trend where persons are
expected to part with money for services rendered
by salaried public officials and says Ghanaians
are now prepared to steal even from the “lowest
of the low”.

Ms. Ohene narrated how, when she was in the
Ministry of Education and paying particular
attention to special needs schools, she noticed
that heads of special needs schools across the
country; which cater to children who are deaf,
dumb or otherwise disabled, had to travel to Accra
to collect their feeding grants.

The heads of these schools, unlike other public
schools were forced to pay cuts of their grants to
the grant disbursers, who refused to send the
money on to the schools because otherwise “the
heads only say thank you” and do not give them a
cut of the funds.

“We have people in Ghana who are ready to take
‘thank yous’ from the blind, the deaf.”, she
emphasised.

“God save us,” she concluded.

Source - Joy News

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