Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, August 7, 2014
A professor of Archival Studies at the
University of Ghana has told the Commission of Enquiry investigating the
payment of judgement debts that he suspects that some public officials are
destroying public documents in order to cover their fraudulent deals.
Prof. Harry Akosa of the Department of
Information Studies said even thought there might be ‘chaos’ in the current
system of record keeping and management “people are trying to obliterate evidential
transaction.”
The Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw Apau
of the Court of Appeal had invited the Department of Information Studies to
enlighten the commission on the importance of record keeping and management and
Prof. Akosa was nominated to make a presentation.
The professor said “we suspect
fraudulent behaviour on the part of some public officials. We always hear or
read in the news how this commission and others are not able to lay hands on
documents to make the needed input for development and you clearly see that
people are obliterating vital documents to cover their tracks.”
He said “records are the corporate
memory of any country but in Ghana we are losing our memory because of our
attitude towards records keeping and management.”
“We are slowly moving towards what I
would call collective national amnesia and I think the commission’s recommendation
should be strong so that sanctions are evoked.”
“If this commission establishes that
some public officials willfully damaged records, sanctions must be evoked. The
cost of creating record is very high so sanctions must apply.”
He said in the past there was ready
market for graduands at the department but the recent job squeezed has affect
the employment of people who have the professional skills to keep and manage
records at public institutions adding “as the squeeze started, there are a
number of them hanging around without jobs and I think it is discouraging new
entrants.”
Prof. Akosa said that the private sector
was doing better than the public sector in the area of record keeping and
management and stated that public institutions do not pay attention to records.
He said the lack of importance attached
to record keeping and management is hurting Ghana so bad saying “records are
for accountability and the fight against corruption and there is no way we can
promote good governance with our poor record keeping.”
He said the donor community helped Ghana
to restructure how it should keep its records in the recent past but added that
“we are surprised we are slipping back to where we were.”
Prof Akosa also said the government
should make sure the records policy works and mentioned Act 535 of 1997 and not
being exploited fully.
He also urged the government to
accelerate the recruitment of qualified people into record keeping sections of
the MDAs as well as the immediate sensitization of public officials to
understand the role played by records.
Felix Nyarko Ampong, Acting Director of
Public Records and Archives Administrative Department (PRAAD) who also
testified, told the commission that they were striving to gain access to the
MDAs to sensitize them on the need for safe record keeping and management.
He said when they wrote to the
ministries reminding them of their obligation to submit all government
contracts to the PRAAD, on Foreign Affairs Ministry complied.
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