Inadequate budgetary support hampers work of CHRAJ

Employees of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) have had to contribute to help the commission operate for the most part of the year.

Budgetary constraints have resulted in the staff association bailing out the commission by personally providing money to buy fuel for vehicles and pay utilities in offices.

Out of the 2015 budgeted allocation of GH¢15,244,538 from the government, only GH¢450,000 has been received by CHRAJ, apart from the salaries of its staff.

The situation has affected all the operations of the commission, including scheduled implementation programmes for the integrated national anti-corruption plan, the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP).

Sad story

A visit to the Greater Accra Regional office of CHRAJ, which is in the same block with the Teacher Education Division of the Ministry of Education and the Department of Women of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, revealed a disheartening work environment.

Seats were broken down, with their leather worn out; desks were creaky; faulty and exposed electrical wires and fittings had resulted in dim offices; the washrooms had no cisterns to enable workers to flush the WCs when they were used; walls were stained and there were many cracks in the walls and in the concrete floors.

“We pray often when we come to work, so that we will not be in the building when a disaster happens,” the bailiff at the regional office, Mr Prince Ben Asare, said.

Challenges

Random interviews conducted with some employees of the CHRAJ showed that morale was low.

Some said because their office furniture was broken, they had to arrange for their own office chairs.

The Administrator of the Greater Accra Regional Office of CHRAJ , Mr Haruna Dauda, said district officers had to come to the regional office to use the computers there, often creating a queue at the secretariat.

Those who had personal laptops had to depend on them, he said, while others had to make it to commercial communication centres at their own cost.

For 2015, the Greater Accra Regional Office has received GH¢4,000, which has been used to defray utility bills, while the four district offices at Amasaman in Ga West, Weija in Ga South, Dodowa in Shai Osudoku and Ada in Dangme East have received a GH¢1,000 each.

He explained that whereas the office received quarterly imprests, it had only received one about the middle of the year.

Funding

The story was similar at the headquarters of CHRAJ, with information gathered showing that the staff association there had to bail out the office by providing funds for some operations

The Deputy Commissioner of CHRAJ in charge of Anti-Corruption and Public Education, Mr Richard Quayson, was sure that with the commitment and investment of funds in the NACAP, Ghana would reap huge returns from the savings that would be made by plugging leakages in the country’s revenue.

He said there was an urgent need for the requisite budgetary allocation for the implementation of the NACAP and the fight against corruption.

In spite of the challenges, he said, CHRAJ, as the lead agency in the fight against corruption, had endeavoured to finalise reporting indicators by MDAs on corruption, which had been validated.

The Greater Accra Regional Director of CHRAJ, Mrs Mary Nortey, said her staff were working in dire circumstances.

Apart from three functional computers in the regional office, district offices had only one functional computer each, while the Weija office has a printer.

“Morale is low; staff are disheartened,” she said.

The NACAP was adopted by Parliament last year and had the blessing of President John Mahama in December 2014.

The adoption of the plan was subsequently followed by a directive from the President on March 19, 2015 to all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) for them to cooperate in its implementation.

However, information gathered by the Daily Graphic showed that apart from the budgetary allocation, no other funding had been made by the Ministry of Finance for the NACAP, although the ministry is represented on the High Level Implementation Committee of the plan.

Information gathered from members of the committee, which is chaired by the Chief of Staff, and the Monitoring Committee, chaired by CHRAJ, showed that implementation and monitoring programmes had had to be down back drastically because of funding challenges.

With some support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the President, CHRAJ has endeavoured to develop indicators for reporting on the NACAP and in April brought together representatives of MDAs, who also make up the monitoring team established under NACAP, to monitor actions and results under it.

Writers email: caroline.boateng@graphic.com.gh