Takoradi, June 6, GNA - The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition at the weekend organized a day's workshop on the Whistleblowers Act for selected journalists in the Western Region at Takoradi. Speaking at the workshop, Mrs Florence Dennis, Executive Secretary of the Coalition, said Whistle blowing has been recognized as a crucial act or tool for exposing corrupt practices at the organizational and national levels.

She said a whistle blowing programme is one of the several best practices and operational expressions of an organization's efforts to build a responsible and ethical organizational culture that requires conscious and unwavering commitment.

Mrs Dennis said since the Whistle blowing Act was passed in 2006, its implementation has caused controversies, mainly due to lack of understanding on the part of individual whistleblowers and the organizations that handle or are supposed to handle information provided by whistleblowers. She said a lack of understanding of the purpose of whistle blowing tends to put the individual at risk and any individual who blows the whistle should be clear about the positive and negative challenges she or he is likely to face, and be prepared physically, psychologically and emotionally to deal with those challenges.

Mrs Dennis said the Act offers opportunities and protection for whistleblowers and this should be understood by the people and made use of when they blow the whistle.

She said anybody could blow the whistle about any person or institution, as long as they have good reason to believe they have reliable information that indicates an impropriety. Mrs Dennis said impropriety could be disclosed to an employer, a Police Officer, the Attorney General, the Auditor General, a staff of the intelligence Agencies, a member of Parliament, the Serious Fraud Office, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the National Media Commission, the Narcotics Board, a chief or the head or elder of the family of the whistleblower.

Others are a head of a recognized religious body, a member of the district assembly, a minister of state, the Office of the President, the Ghana revenue Commission and a District Chief Executive, she said. Mrs Dennis said the law encourages and supports disclosure about impropriety that has already occurred, is occurring or is about to occur, and the most important thing is that the disclosure must be based on facts, not suspicions, suppositions and conjectures. She said under the law, a person who intends to make a disclosure of impropriety must have "reasonable cause" for doing so. Mrs Dennis said the law protects only persons who follow the prescribed steps in making a disclosure of impropriety and in order to be protected. A whistleblower must make the disclosure only to persons or institutions specified in the law, she said.