President Mahama says judges indicted in the recent judicial corruption scandal will not be spared if proven guilty. The Vice President, Paa Kwesi Amissah Arthur, suspended the justices after a prima facie case was established against them.
Speaking on a France-based TV station France 24, President Mahama said he had ordered the Chief Justice to further investigate the judges, “and they will be removed from the bench if they are found guilty.” “Any other criminal proceedings that should be exercised will be done,” he added. He also stated the scandal gives the nation an opportunity to strengthen its institutions. “I think it is a reflection of institutional weakness that we need to work on and make sure we have stronger institutions but there has been a focus on the scandal that was generated without focusing also on the fact that there were at least 10 Judges whose integrity was intact who threatened to call the Police on this investigative journalist and it shows that there is some healthy fabric that we can grow. “It even shows the robustness of our system that we are even able to deal with it. I don’t know how some other country would have even dealt with it,” said the President.
Nurses’ strike
The President also spoke about the nationwide strike declared by nurses. He explained that the failure of the human resource system caused the current situation.
“The issue of the nurses’ strike is not to do with asking for more money. It is a failure of our human resource system. The Ministry of Health is not able to process quickly enough the data of new nurses so that the Accountant General’s Department can capture it and begin to pay them. So often the postings are done, the nurses go to post, it takes the Ministry of Health too long to process their data and so they stay without salary for some period of time,” he explained. He was however quick to add that measures are being taken to rectify those challenges. “What we need to do is to balance it out in terms of economic management. We should negotiate these things and so we are doing that already. We have sat down with labour and we are talking about what the percentage increase for next year should be and we are going to fix that in the budget and once we fix it into the budget all of us must help to maintain fiscal discipline.” The nurses embarked on an indefinite strike to protest the non payment of their salaries. On Tuesday, the Controller and Accountant General’s Department released money for the payment of outstanding arrears owed nurses in 3 psychiatric hospitals in Ghana.
Source – Citifm
