General News of Tuesday, 10 February 2015

Source: Today Newspaper

‘Govt must stop corruption’

A lecturer at the University of Cape Coast (UCC,) John Wendy Ansah, has indicated that there was the need for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to halt corruption if it wants to end the current power outages that has hit the country.

According to the UCC lecturer, if the government would be bold enough to prosecute and retrieve all monies from corrupt public officials, the problem of erratic power supply known in the local parlance as ‘dumsor, dumsor’ indeed would be “a thing of the past.”

He could not understand why as at now, the NDC government was not showing any sign of retrieving all the monies fraudulently acquired by some individuals and companies who were found culpable by the law.

“The solution to this ‘dumsor, dumsor’ is something which is not far-fetched. All that the government has to do is to gather courage and chase corrupt officials for our money to help put the situation to normalcy,” the UCC lecturer asserted.

Though he did not mention names of individuals or companies that should be made to pay all “stolen” monies, he urged President Mahama to do more to mitigate the numerous alleged corruption cases in the country.

Mr. Ansah made these observations on Ghana Great and Strong, a non-partisan programme broadcast every Saturday from 7:00 P.M., to 8:00 P.M., on Ghana’s premier internet-based radio, www.hedjorleonlineradio.com in Accra.

He was contributing to a wide range of national issues notably, the current energy situation facing the country.

He intimated that government must start cracking the whip by firing those who were not living up to the expectation of Ghanaians as far as the energy situation was concerned.

“Why should people be kept at their positions at the Volta River Authority (VRA,) GRIDCo and Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) when their performances were unsatisfactorily,” he fumed.

The current energy situation though he noted, Ghanaians had “unwillingly” accepted it; he added was gradually eroding the already existing economic gains Ghana had chalked over the years.

For his part, a worker at Gold Coast Fund Management (GCFM), Andrews Sefa, called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, do something drastic about the energy crisis bedeviling the country.

He pointed out that the load-shedding exercise was affecting businesses and the earlier the government of NDC did something the better for the country.

“What is lacking in this current administration is its inability to deal with corrupt officials and I think if prudent measures were put in place we would definitely not be where we are now,” he stated.