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Penplusbytes’ METOGU Anti-Corruption Project takes off

METOGU

Making politicians accountable, a key principle of good governance, requires openness and more importantly well designed and properly resourced engagement tools. Traditionally, CSOs have taken the lead in the accountability agenda and used a number of approaches to tackle the government on its progress or lack of it particularly on anti-corruption laws and programmes. It is for this reason that Penplusbytes with support from STAAC (Strengthening Transparency and Accountability against Corruption) is implementing a two year Anti-corruption project dubbed “METOGU!” (Keeping the pressure on) project.

The overall aim of the project is to create awareness amongst citizens on government interventions to fight corruption and create pathways for citizens to hold government to account to deliver on their promises. Using an adapted community scorecard and performance scorecard, government’s progress in the fight against corruption will be co-measured and displayed annually. This will influence the government to review and address what progress it is making on its anti-corruption promises in an ethical way, which takes citizens needs into consideration and involves wider stakeholders. It will also support a closer relationship between government and civil society as well as state and citizenry; creating constructive relationships to increase accountability and collective problem solving.

To kick start activities under the project, a day’s writeshop was held at the New Media Hub in Accra which brought together key stakeholders in the anti-corruption space to deliberate on and develop a moderator’s guidebook to be used in administering scorecards to gauge citizen perception of the government’s anti-corruption interventions.

Participants queried some scoreboards while taking into consideration the creation of the office of the special prosecutor, assets declaration, passage of the right to information bill, value for money audit, compliance of public act, beneficial ownership title, public education, restructuring National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), school feeding program and others.

The community scorecard will be administered in three selected districts each in four regions (Greater Accra, Ashanti, Western and Volta Regions).