Senior Presidential Advisor Yaw Osafo-Maafo has underscored the need for increased transparency in the declaration of assets owned by public officials.
The former senior minister said this will help in bolstering accountability within Ghana’s governance framework.
He argued that current regulations require public officials, including ministers and select personnel, to declare their assets to the auditor general, but this lack of transparency hinders accountability.
The senior official said he was not impressed with the current asset declaration framework.
To him, the confidentiality maintained between the auditor general and individuals makes it difficult for scrutiny and accountability.
Yaw Osafo-Maafo was speaking at a stakeholder engagement of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra.
“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.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
