Our methodology was highly scrutinized GSS defends corruption report

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has refuted the Ghana Police Service’s claim that their recent study on corruption in Ghana is flawed.

The study dubbed “Corruption in Ghana, People’s Experiences and View” conducted by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), found the Service to be the most corrupt public institution in the country.

The report disclosed that out of the GHC17.4 million bribes paid to public institutions in 2021 the Ghana Police officers topped the list of officials who take bribes with 53.2%.

But the Ghana Police Service, not pleased with the research conducted, questioned the methodology used to conduct the survey.

In a five-page reply to the three institutions, Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare stated that the study’s conclusions were severely contested and tainted from both an intellectual and practical standpoint.

“Our discomfort, therefore, is the use of selective ranking methodology to project the outcomes in a manner that puts an unfair focus on the Police Service, with all the others in your corruption index escaping public scrutiny.”

“The Service has almost now become the default institution of choice for such research and has therefore encouraged a deep-seated public stereotype over the years. This stereotype may easily influence respondent choices, and it is, therefore, fair to expect that you factor it in assessing the validity of your findings,” Dr. George Akuffo Dampare noted in his statement.

Responding to the reservation by the Police Service, GSS defended its corruption report stating that the methodology employed to sample the respondents was robust and devoid of errors.

The Director of Social and Demographic Statistics at the GSS, Anthony Amuzu Pharin Anthony, stated that “our methodology and all our issues were subjected to very high scrutiny. There was a steering committee on this made up of institutions including the police to approve our methodology.

He revealed that the research was solely based on the experiences of the public.

Mr Amuzu explained that “we randomly selected 15,000 households and within the households, we randomly selected one adult.

The information we collected suggested this. We are not dealing with perceptions. We are  dealing with actual experience. Initially, when we published the story, some people were asking us what the way forward is. The way forward is to sit with CHRAJ and come up with recommendations for the specific institutions based on the report we have come out with.”

Meanwhile, the Ghana Statistical Service has revealed that it spent GH¢6 million in conducting its corruption perception report recently released.

According to the GSS, a component of the expenditure was from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“In total, we spent about ¢6 million on this survey, but obviously this had a component of the expenditure from UNODC side because of the technical support they provided, but once we are doing this by ourselves, we think something around ¢5 million will suffice,” he said.

Prof. Annim also said they will engage with the Finance Minister to see how often this research can be done.

“We have already started conversations on that unfortunately the conversations are from our development partners but what we are going to do together with CHRAJ is to approach the Minister for Finance to see what the government can do in terms of whether every year or every two years.”

Source: The Independent Ghana