Payment of judgement debt will collapse our economy
The Sole Commissioner of the Judgement Debt Commission, Mr Justice Yaw Apau, expressed the feeling of many Ghanaians when he took issue with the manner in which the Attorney-General’s Department had been sanctioning the payment of judgement debt in the country.
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He expressed the concern at the sitting of the commission last Tuesday when a representative of the Ministry of Finance narrated the circumstances under which GH¢264,644 was paid to one Peter Abban as judgement debt, in spite of protestations from the Department of Urban Roads (DUR).
The report said Mr Abban had claimed that his property had been demolished to pave the way for the construction of the Kanda Highway in 1993 and consequently sued the government for compensation.
It was revealed at the sitting that despite protestations from the DUR, which were contained in a letter it wrote to the Ministry of Finance, the ministry went ahead to pay the money to the claimant.
Mr Justice Apau, in his frustration, echoed the recommendation of the Constitution Review Commission for the decoupling of the Attorney-General’s position from that of the Minister of Justice, saying, “We should have an Attorney-General who is very serious about state cases because there is no supervision of the lawyers who work at the Attorney-General’s Office.”
According to him, “It is high time the state took a look at the calibre of lawyers it recruits into the A-G’s Department. Either by design or accident, we always have default judgement but we are not concerned why our money has been going to waste for so many years.”
Since judgement debts became a matter of public debate, Ghanaians have been shocked by the revelations of payments made to people who have done no job for the country.
From the stories, it appears that some public servants, in connivance with businessmen and private individuals, have found judgement debt payment the most lucrative and cheap way to make money on the back of the state.
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Some of the revelations show the complete breakdown of the state apparatus to protect the public purse.
Ghana is richly endowed and the resources, if properly harnessed, can change the fortunes of the country.
If reports from the Judgement Debt Commission are anything to go by, then the Daily Graphic thinks there is the need to revisit our traditional values of honesty, integrity, hard work and modesty in public life.
At present, these values have been thrown to the dogs, as success in life is measured by the financial standing of a person or the number of material things he or she possesses. Even in the churches and the mosques, front rows are given to the “shakers and movers” of our society, without necessarily questioning how they made their wealth.
Given the present situation of everybody chasing wealth through corruption in high places, including public offices; the indulgence in ‘sakawa’ and the long queues of people at the A-G’s Office seeking the payment of judgement debt, our attempt at rebuilding the economy will be a pipe dream or akin to fetching water with a basket.
We call on civil society groups, the media and, indeed, the entire society to put pressure on the government to reform the A-G’s Department.