The Ghana Police Service was ranked first in a recent study on corruption, but the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, has objected.
Dr. Dampare questioned the methodology and labeled the findings as “heavily challenged and corrupt” in a 14-point letter to the research organizations, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
He stated, “We think that such research is intended to discover remedies for the country’s corruption-related concerns.
“The Service has long admitted that some of its employees may be engaged in corrupt activities, and we continue to take steps to deter such behavior.
It likely would have been beneficial if you had hired us to consider what the Service is doing and incorporate this into the results.
The following are some of the issues the IGP brought up in his letter on July 27:
i. It has been noted that some public institutions, including the Attorney General (AG’s) Department, the Registrar Generals Department, the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, Ghana Civil Aviation, Audit Service, Parliamentary Service, Ghana National Fire Service, Gaming Commission, Public Media houses, National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), and Narcotic Control Commission (NACOC), among others, were not covered by the research.
ii. More significantly, a closer examination of the report reveals that your two institutions—the CHRAJ and the Ghana Statistical Service—were not included in the study. We wonder why you do not consider them to be candidates for a corruption investigation given that they also offer vital public services.
iii. We also observed that some organizations, such as the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), were divided into parts, one of which dealt with customs officials and the other with tax officers. Another example is the Ghana Health Service, which included other healthcare professionals in the public hospitals as well as physicians, nurses, and midwives in one body. Even several other organizations, such as the Ghana Water Company, the Ghana Electricity Company, and others that provide public utility services, were combined into one. One may wonder why your strategy is inconsistent.
iv. In certain cases, you integrated separate institutions into a single organization; for instance, prosecutors are not a component of the court service, yet you combined them into a single organization. Additionally, despite the fact that they both work in the education sector, lecturers and instructors do not actually belong to the same organization. We believe that this is a blatant example of how mixing oranges and mangoes can taint each fruit’s flavor.
v. Only portions of some other organizations, such as the Judicial Service, which is made up of people other than judges, were discussed. The institutions that lecturers, professors, and teachers represent do not entirely consist of them. How about the other representatives of these organizations? Do their behaviors have any impact on how well their institutions provide services? This demonstrates that you contrasted the entirety of some institutions to their constituent pieces. You specifically contrasted the entire Police Service with various divisions of the Judicial Service, the GRA, and other entities.
vi. We are aware that there are three branches of government: the executive, legislative branch, and judicial branch. According to what we understand, the majority of the institutions you looked at in your research are part of the Executive branch. Despite this, you introduced another organization called the Executive Branch of Government without elaborating on its functions. Your insight will be valuable in this regard.
vii. We’ve also read that you used various layers of quality control to weed out faults in your research, but after reading the report, we think we have a fair case for being dubious of this quality control method. For instance, as we cannot sense that in the research, we wonder if you made any attempts to confirm and validate from any of the affected institutions the authenticity of the information given to you by the respondents.
We would require a regional, monthly, and departmental breakdown of your findings for the Police Service using your contacts-based and value-based ranking techniques for your study. This will help us identify the problems and address them.
ix We were surprised that a significant study like this did not provide any ideas or remedies because we did not notice any particular recommendations in the report.
x. There is also a genuine chance that past stereotypes of the Police Service may have influenced your research. As the practically universal institution of choice for this kind of study, the Service has over time fostered a pervasive public stereotype. It is reasonable to assume that you will take this stereotype into account when evaluating the validity of your findings because it may readily impact respondents’ choices.
xi. Based on the aforementioned, it is our well-considered opinion that the research and its conclusions are severely contested and tainted from both an academic and practical standpoint.
We want it known that we are extremely passionate about this because the constant, empirically and scientifically unsupported labeling of the police as the most corrupt institution in the nation only serves to reinforce this perception, harm the Police Service’s reputation, and lower the morale of its staff. We have no choice but to offer our opinions on this subject since, as we have all come to realize, perception frequently has more sway than reality.
It further questioned why research organizations like GSS and CHRAJ were left out of the polls given that some of their employees may have engaged in corruption.
From the aforementioned, it is our well-considered opinion that the research and its conclusions are severely contested and tainted from both an academic and practical perspective.
