The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) has urged the government to prosecute all corruption cases without fear or favour.

The Conference said reports from the Judgement Debts Commission, GYEEDA, Sa­vanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), the National Service Scheme, FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the Commission on Hu­man Rights and Administrative Justice as worry­ing.

These were contained in a communique issued after its plenary assembly in Accra on Friday.

Reading the communique at a church service at the Holy Spirit Cathedral, Adabraka, to climax its week-long meeting, the Most Rev Joseph Osei- Bonsu, president of GCBC, said the bishops were disturbed about the ‘twin-evil’, bribery and corrup­tion in the country, and “regret to note that these evils continue to range every fabric of Ghanaian society”.

He said the country is openly and pervasively corrupt with people at all levels, including some Christians engaging in naked corruption with impu­nity and urged government to do more to nip the canker in the bud.

He lauded the government for prosecuting some high level personalities in its administra­tion for their alleged involvement in corrupt prac­tices.

“We decry the mismanagement and apparent failure of these programmes and institutions, and call on the government to do all it can to ensure that it delivers on its mandate,” he said.

The communique said greed breeds hard­heartedness, stealing, blackmail, bribery, corrup­tion and even murder, adding that corruption en­courages and condones incompetence, bureau­cracy, mediocrity at work, and disrespect for higher authorities.

Such factors, it said, also drive away invest­ment and lead to unnecessary suffering and pov­erty, and urged all to resolve to refrain from such acts, while entreating individuals and businesses to do their part to end corruption in the country.

On money laundering, the GCBC urged the Bank of Ghana and the institutions responsible, to ensure that they check cheating of clients by some unscrupulous workers in the banks and some financial institutions.

Touching on the economy, the Conference noted that the fall of the cedi, the de­clining economy, the high cost of doing business and folding up of companies is worrying.

The GCBC is also not happy with the high dependence on foreign goods as against local prod­ucts, noting that they have the propensity of derailing the growth of local industries.

It mentioned in particular, the importa­tion of chairs from China to Parliament, say­ing the continuous importation of foreign goods could not help transform the economy.

“We join our voices to those of many Ghanaians who disapprove the importation of furniture from China for our Parliament, when made in Ghana furniture could have been patronised to boost the furniture industry and the economy as a whole”.

“We pray that our own home-grown eco­nomic policies such as those implemented under SADA, GYEEDA and Youth Enterprise Support (YES) may be led by qualified and competent persons,” it said.

Such policies, it said, should be given the utmost priority over externally-funded sup­port programmes, adding “our experience is that externally-funded economic interven­tions almost always lead to unbearable'conse­quences on citizens”.

On strikes, the Bishops called on the government and Organised Labour to always use dialogue and negotiations in dealing with labour disputes and agitations, saying it was prepared to play a mediatory role in the reso­lution of the ongoing impasse among the par­ties.