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Question: Ghana’s assets regime is perceived as a farce. What measures will you take to raise public confidence in the assets declaration process? Prof. Mills: Assets declaration, I believe, is quite important. But what end does it serve? I agree that assets declaration must be publicised; but first of all we must even verify that the declaration is true. You cannot just list any assets hoping that when you go into office you will acquire them. Number two, at the end of the period, you must file your asset declaration form and again the verification should be done. There was a time when the assets declaration covered spouses. I will not limit it to spouses, there are surrogates; there are people who are close enough who also acquire assets on behalf of office holders. I believe that we should be able to broaden this out. How practical this will be is another matter. But on the issue of corruption, I believe that I speak for a number of Ghanaians when I say that corruption is really breaking our society. We have this framework that we are all talking about. Clearly, it is not working; it is not working because people get away with corruption. People can take money with impunity. The right signals are not being sent down. So I think that we must show that we are serious about corruption. When people are flaunting their obscene wealth, nobody raises an eyebrow. We should be able to say, “look, enough is enough”. Our people know what is happening, they know; they’ve been victims of corruption. Leadership must crack the whip, crack the whip, crack the whip and that is the only way that we are going to get over the problem. Follow up question: I see that none of you has a problem with publicly declaring your assets. Would each of you be confident enough to tell us for instance how many homes you have? 48
Prof. Mills: I have two. I would have been happier if you had asked about the nature of the house. Question: What specific measures would you put in place to transform the rural environment and improve the quality of life there? Prof. Mills: If you’ve travelled around the countryside as I have, you will see very clearly that there is the need for us to do something. Water is a very rare commodity. The Ghana Water and Sanitation Agency obviously has problems. The 5% requirement before they produce or give you this facility has to be looked at. Number two, Health. How many of them have access to health facilities? You go to health posts and there are no nurses there; you have no doctors there. That is one area. You may have NHIS but NHIS only deals with the cost when you get medical treatment. Number three, education. You go round the countryside, the rural areas, people are walking for miles; accessibility is a problem. Even when they go to school, the schools’ structures are such that you wouldn’t want your kids to be there. Then the teachers; nobody cares about the teachers, so you go to empty classrooms. Now the mainstay is agriculture. How have we helped to develop it? In the north you see women walking miles to pick shea-nut, bitten by snakes. Can’t we give them donkey carts? Can’t we help them to process the sheanut that we have? You go to the rural areas it is agriculture. Are we modernising agriculture for them? Are we helping them with water, harvesting, with dams, with irrigation? Are we giving them the inputs? When they finish do we give them access to the markets? Construction of feeder roads is very important. We need to maintain the feeder roads regularly and we need to ensure that District Assemblies spend money on the rural areas to prevent the rural-urban migration. 49
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Delivering On Your Promises: IEA Gh
Page 3 and 4: The Institute of Economic Affairs (
Page 5 and 6: PREFACE The Institute of Economic A
Page 7 and 8: 1. AN EVENING ENCOUNTER WITH PRESID
Page 9 and 10: consider this unacceptable. Even mo
Page 11 and 12: HIV/AIDS. Indeed, about a week ago
Page 13 and 14: ated with its production and distri
Page 15 and 16: ing glory to the efforts by the GNP
Page 17 and 18: QUESTION AND ANSWER SECTION Matilda
Page 19 and 20: youth, who are the future. Here we
Page 21 and 22: Now you ask about the language we a
Page 23 and 24: teaching will no longer be taken in
Page 25 and 26: It tells you that where you have a
Page 27 and 28: Ernest Owusu Aboagye, Pharmaceutica
Page 29 and 30: their full dignity. We have a lot o
Page 31 and 32: of you come to me under cover of da
Page 33 and 34: Harry Williams: Prof. you spoke ext
Page 35 and 36: Akwasi Sarpong, JOY FM: Prof Mills,
Page 37 and 38: know that it is not the state’s d
Page 39 and 40: Indeed we have cases where there is
Page 41 and 42: what you are saying. That is what m
Page 43 and 44: teachers, the teacher is at the cen
Page 45 and 46: issue if we think that NHIS alone i
Page 47 and 48: get enough. We’ve already said th
Page 49 and 50: As a young lecturer I used to think
Page 51 and 52: • We look at the judiciary - is t
Page 53: Dr. Nduom that the time has come wh
Page 57 and 58: Question: According to the 2000 Pop
Page 59 and 60: Prof. Mills: I will say that afford
Page 61 and 62: Question: You have each touched on
Page 63 and 64: There is the perception that we are
Page 65 and 66: with you. You may have heard our di
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