BIA initiates public governance programme
The Bureau For Internal Affairs (BIA), an anti-corruption organisation is launching a door-to-door information gathering and sharing programme, to facilitate effective governance and human development.
The activities of the Bureau shall include data collection, establishment of a centre for public concerns, promotion of efforts to boost national productivity, creating institutional wheels for anti-corruption and participatory democracy; and response to public concerns by appropriate departments.
The rest are advocacy against acts that affect governance adversely, vehicle for empowerment of the populace in the development process, collaboration with relevant bodies and authorities in addressing concerns of the public, and seminars and workshops to whip up realisation of national development goals.
Mr Mohammed Frimpong, Executive Secretary of BIA, made this known at a roundtable in Accra organised by the Bureau for personnel of the Civil Servants Association (CSA) in Accra.
He said the programme is advocating the creation of community and workplace information bureaux, to disseminate the constitutional mandate of spreading national development equally.
This, the organisation hopes would reduce the increasing tension and concerns of the citizenry in the prudent harnessing and management of national resources.
Mr Frimpong said at the centre of the debate for prudent harnessing and management of scarce national resources is the stage of human development in respect of basic human rights, healthy economy, right to work, right to good healthcare and right to education.
“A cornerstone of our current constitutional dispensation is participatory democracy serving as the means for the realisation of probity and accountability established much earlier from a tumultuous social process in June 1979 and December 1981,”he said.
Mr Frimpong said Article 35 (6) (d) of the Constitution expressed the need to afford all possible opportunities to the people to participate in decision making at every level in national life and in government.
“Article 36 (11); encourage the participation of workers in the decision-making process at the workplace.”
He said the community and workplace bureaux are therefore constitutionally mandatory as the wheels for the rapid realisation of human and democratic development.
Mr Frimpong said Article 36 (e) of the Constitution recognise that the most secure democracy is the one that assures the basic necessities of life for its people as a fundamental duty.
Mr Ben Anyagre, Director, Welfare and Projects of CSA, described BIA’s door-to-door information gathering as a good initiative, which adds up to good governance.
“If it begins to spread to the grass roots it would help to reduce corruption, “he said.
Mr Anyagre said people are too anxious to see their lives transformed by the judicious use of public funds to facilitate development.
BIA is an anti corruption organisation and a centre for information gathering on public concerns with the aim of bridging the gap between the public and the authorities on issues negatively affecting the nation.
It is focussed on revenue fraud and leakages, abuse of public office for personal interest, bribery and corruption and wanton dissipation of funds among other duties.
Source: GNA