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Release of Report of the Voice of the People 2011

Statement by Vitus A. Azeem, Executive Director (GII)

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, Development Partners, members of the Ghana Anti-corruption Coalition and members of the diplomatic community, on behalf of the Board and Management of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, I welcome you all to this morning’s Press Conference which is held to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day.

On this occasion, we wish to share with you a report of GII’s Voice of the People Survey of citizens’ views on and experiences of corruption conducted in April, this year. This report replaces the Global Corruption Barometer which is usually released by Transparency International every year but which has not been released this year.

The Voice of the People Survey sampled the views of 2,096 respondents in two districts each in all of the ten regions in the country. The Survey came out with the following main findings:

a) Corruption is a serious problem in Ghana;

b) Corruption is perceived to have increased over the last three years that is between April 2008 and April 2011;

c) Government has not effectively addressed corruption;

d) Key public institutions, including the Police, Executive, Parliament and the Judiciary, are ranked high in popular perception of corruption;

e) However, the same institutions that are perceived to be corrupt are the very ones that the citizens trust to address the problem of corruption;

f) Corruption is fuelled by mere greed and the desire for ostentatious living;

g) The award of contracts in the country is influenced by factors other than merit and the compliance with the public procurement rules and regulations;

h) Many citizens do not report corruption because they do not expect any serious action against the perpetrators;

i) However, individual citizens believe that they can make a contribution to curbing corruption;

j) Citizens must not only condemn and resist corruption but also report corrupt acts and pressurize the government to act on credible reports of corruption.

k) The media has an important role to play in the fight against corruption.

l) Ghanaians’ knowledge of GII is very low just like their lack of knowledge as to where to report cases of corruption.

Detailed Results

Out of the 2,096 respondents, 1936 of them, constituting 92.4% reported that corruption was a serious problem in the country. However, 74 respondents, constituting a small portion of 3.5% responded that corruption was not a serious problem.

When asked whether corruption had increased or decreased over the last three years, 37.8% of the respondents reported that corruption had “increased a lot” in the last three years while 19.9% of the respondents reported that it had “increased”. Thus, a total of 57.7% of the respondents felt that corruption had increased in the past three years. In addition, 20.4% of the respondents felt that corruption had remained the same over the last three years. Only 19% of the respondents reported that corruption had either “decreased a lot” or “decreased a little” while 2.7% had no opinion or refused to respond to the question.

The following is a representation of respondents views on selected institutions, mainly service providers, and how they are perceived to be affected by corruption on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 “meant not corrupt at all”, and 5 meaning “extremely corrupt”.

The Police Service came out first with a score of 4.6 out of 5.0, followed by Customs, Political Parties and the Executive with 4.1, 3.9 and 3.7, respectively. The Judiciary came next with 3.6, followed by Parliament with a score of 3.3. It is worth noting that the views of the general public on the Police Service, political parties, Parliament, the Judiciary and the media have not changed notably over the years.

Read the full Voice of the People 2011 report here.


For any press enquiries please contact

Ms Audrey Gadzekpo, Chair Ghana Integrity Initiative
T: : +233 (0) 21 760884
E: [email protected]