The latest mega-scandal in which the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) is alleged to have spent as much as U.S.$72 million to pay for IT infrastructure meant to digitise the state pension scheme and underpin the networking of the scheme's processes for employers' employee pension deduction-receiverables and payments to pensioners nationwide, but which apparently isn't fit for purpose, shows just how our nation is being slowly bled dry by egregious high-level corruption.
No doubt that outrage is only the tip of a massive iceberg of high-level corruption in Ghana. Sadly, at every turn one looks in the public sector, there are clever white-collar crooks busy swindling the state and getting away with it - in sundry profiteering and scamming schemes.
The question is: Has the time not now come for Ghanaian society to ensure that those elected to govern our country make whistleblowing such a lucrative enterprise that it will spawn an industry offering opportunities for those able to provide information leading to the uncovering of public-sector white-collar crimes and the successful prosecution and jailing of all those ripping off Mother Ghana, with such impunity?
If, for example, a 10 percent reward is offered today to anyone who will provide the government with information that will enable Ghana to abrogate the AMERI power agreement, will we not see a rush by public servants and other individuals with privileged insider information who know what actually took place during the period before the agreement was signed, to provide that all-important evidence of corruption needed to sue AMERI for a refund of the US$150 million excess payment now in contention?
Ditto a small army of informants trooping in to offer information that will finally enable prosecutors to nail that rogue with a forked-tongue, Woyome, over the GHc51 millions paid to that sodden con man? Will that not save Ghana money that can be used to improve the quality of life of millions of our people, I ask?
The question then is: If we had such a policy in place at the time this abominable SSNIT IT infrastructure deal was struck, is it not concievable that someone in SSNIT would have exposed this abominable monstrosity - even before a pesewa of contributors' money was spent by what is an organisation that pays its top management well to incentivise them to act to prevent such dreadful nation-wrecking scandals?
Let us make whistleblowing a financially rewarding and very profitable tax-free activity in Ghana - as a practical, effective and more realistic method of ending high-level corruption in our homeland Ghana. Haaba. Enough is enough.
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