Concerning evidence of bribery in the hiring of security personnel

Concerning evidence of bribery in the hiring of security personnel – Government Statistician

Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, the government’s statistician, has raised concern about the dishonest means and techniques individuals use to get job prospects in the public sector.

According to him, there are likely to be “rippling effects” on the effectiveness and productivity of public service delivery due to the extent of bribery and corruption in security recruiting procedures.

Prof. Annim observed that a number of significant posts are being awarded to favoured candidates based on personal, family, or social ties rather than unbiased and merit-based hiring procedures.

“What our study made clear is that, of our respondents, 12.5% had sought for jobs in the public sector; of those 25, 25% were hired; and of these 25, about 4 out of 10 had either paid bribes or obtained the post via nepotism or both.

On Saturday, July 23, he said to Samson Anyenini, “My concern here is the rippling effect because it’s not just the implications of paying the bribes but the consequences of getting people who are not competent and, at the end of the day, the effect from the perspective of corruption will be compounded by getting a public service that doesn’t have the right people.”

According to a poll conducted in 2021 by the Ghana Statistical Service and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, bribes of $5 billion were paid to get basic services in both the public and commercial sectors.

According to the “2021 Ghana Integrity of Public Services Survey,” 9.1 percent of private sector officials and 26.7 percent of public sector employees participated in bribery.

“These discussions need to continue from the viewpoints of what the cascading repercussions of bribe payments are. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has provided the funding for this project; the whole budget was close to $6 million.

He said, “If you look at this from the viewpoint of the 5 million we’ve measured, as a nation we should institutionalize this, and then over time we can assess the true benefits of interventions that we are putting in [place].”

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), in contrast, is unsurprised by the most recent study that names bribery as a serious problem in the nation.

Previous studies carried out by the GII, according to Mary Awelana Addah, the organization’s programs manager, had comparable results.

This, in her opinion, just serves to confirm that the threat is widespread.

She remarked on Newsfile, “We’ve done this previously, and the numbers we discovered aren’t all that different.