Info Bill to be laid before Parliament

29/5/09
Daily Graphic- Page 3

THE government is set to lay before Parliament the long-awaited Right to Information Bill, in fulfilment of its promise to ensure transparency and accountability in governance.
The Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, who disclosed this in an address read on his behalf at the opening of a training programme on democracy and governance in Accra yesterday, gave the assurance that the government would place before Parliament “the Economic and Organised Crime Office Bill before the end of the year".
“The President has also indicated his willingness to review the Public Assets Declaration Law to make it more transparent and accessible to the general public, while protecting the right of public office holders who will declare their assets as mandated by the constitution,” he noted.
He said the Economic and Organised Crime Office Bill, when passed into law, would replace the Serious Fraud Office Law.
He said the Economic and Organised Crime Office Bill had been designed to bring on board issues of tax evasion, tax avoidance, electronic base crimes, cross-border crimes, money laundering, human trafficking and other forms of serious fraud.
The Vice-President further disclosed that the government would also pass the Mutual Legal Assistance Bill which would ensure that legal assistance would be provided and received in the areas of investigation and tracing of crimes which began outside the country’s borders but which affected Ghana and those which began in Ghana but affected other countries.
The reason, he said, was that the quest for public accountability had led to dire consequences, including allegations of human rights abuses.
He encouraged the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) to re-invigorate itself and venture into the area of capacity building for CSOs whose focal activity was anti-corruption and good governance.
Mr Mahama commended the organisers of the seminar, the Marquette University’s Les Aspin Centre for Good Governance, for doing a tremendous job in the training of many Ghanaians, with support from USAID.
Participants in the training programme, which began on May 27, 2009 and ends on June 7, 2009, include 16 government and civil society personnel from Ghana, six from Nigeria and five from Mali.
The goal, according to the Co-ordinator of African Programmes, Les Aspin Centre for Government, Dr Cephas Lerewonu, was to train the participants to understand accountability and good governance systems, as well as the necessary strategies to promote accountability in the public and private sectors.
He said after their training participants would use the experience, knowledge and resources to develop country specific strategies for managing and implementing effective performance and delivery systems.
The US Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Donald G. Teitelbaum, urged the media and Parliament to hold public officials accountable.
To ensure that, he said they would also be training the media in methods and techniques of holding public officers accountable at the macro level and the freedom of the press to access public information.