Luckily, our Motherland is endowed with rich human and natural resources which, if properly harnessed, can stimulate development and growth.
For now we are being told that there are many challenges facing the economy, major among them being the refusal of the donor partners to honour their pledges to the country.
We know that anybody who always relies on others for survival loses respect and dignity. It is also true that in this age of inter-dependence, the policy of autarky will be utopian, as no single nation can marshall enough resources to be self-reliant.
Ghana and many African countries sit on abundant resources but their citizens wallow in want and poverty because of the wanton dissipation of the resources of the state by certain selfish individuals.
In the specific case of Ghana, the media space is full of reports of one form of mismanagement and corruption or another that deprives the people of the benefits of their heritage.
Ghanaians are very appalled by the revelations, particularly at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament, that the resources of the state are dissipated on frivolous and prestigious projects or to line the pockets of people who are being taken care of with the taxpayers’ money.
Revelations about the misappropriation of public funds made at PAC sittings in the past did not move the leaders of the state to act decisively by bringing to book those who profit from the sweat of the masses.
The inaction of the state has emboldened some public servants to steal state funds for personal gain because there is no precedence to learn from.
But the Daily Graphic wants to ask: For how long will our leaders look on while the scarce resources are diverted from projects meant to improve the well-being of the people?
We dare say that if the state fails to crack the whip on those who misappropriate state funds, our efforts at nation building will not achieve many results.
We think as a nation, we ought to get serious, so that our public servants and donors do not take us for granted.
That is why the revelation at the PAC sitting yesterday that a chunk of money allocated to five metropolitan assemblies in 2010 under the second Urban Environmental Sanitation Project (UESP II) had been used on consultants is untenable.
Mr Mohammed Ahmed Baba Jamal, a Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, attributed the situation to conditionalities attached to the loan.
The Daily Graphic thinks if that was the case, then Ghanaians did not have value for money in the execution of the project.
There Is also an additional puzzle — how Parliament endorsed the loan in 2010 without noticing that a large portion of it was earmarked for consultancy services.
The Daily Graphic calls on Parliament to learn from this experience and subsequently scrutinise all loan agreements placed before it, notwithstanding which side of the divide the MPs belong to.
We also remind the government of its pledge to fight corruption by prosecuting all public servants and individuals cited for the misappropriation of state funds to serve as a deterrent to others, as reports of corruption in the public sector have been “unprecedented and the corruption gargantuan”.
Daily Graphic/Ghana
