The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has urged the government to improve on its information disclosure in the oil and gas sector as a way of insulating the sector against corruption. It said elaborate provisions on transparency, accountability and public oversight mechanisms in the Petroleum Revenue Management Bill must also be maintained to prevent graft in the handling of petroleum revenue. A Deputy Commissioner of CHRAJ, Mr Richard Quayson, said this in Accra yesterday when he launched a report on the State of Corruption in Ghana 2010 to commemorate the International Day of Anti-Corruption. December 9, each year marks the International Anti-Corruption Day instituted by United Nations (UN) Resolution 58/4 on October 31, 2003 and the State of Corruption in Ghana 2010 was launched to mark the seventh anniversary of the day. Emphasising the importance of making the oil and gas sector transparent, Mr Quayson quoted from the 2010 Revenue Watch Index-Transparency: Governments and Oil and Mining Industries, published by the Revenue Watch Institute, which showed that Ghana performed poorly in terms of providing public information on its extractive industry, obtaining 32.3 out of 100 on the index. The score placed the country in the category of countries with "scant revenue transparency", which also includes Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea. He explained that the low level of transparency in the country's extractive industry undermined citizens' ability to hold governments and the industry accountable for their performance in the management of resources. The State of Corruption in Ghana 2010 consists of information provided by agencies on corruption, an analysis of complaints received from the public and media reports on corruption, corruption-related studies and surveys by other national and international organisations. The report looked at the health and educational sectors, cocoa and mining industries and generally corruption in the public sector which was described as petty and rife. Petty corruption in the public sector, the report said, resulted in all Ghanaians paying double for each service. In the health sector, CHRAJ indicted doctors and nurses in the country for "increasing lateness and absenteeism". It also cited the health sector for the diversion of drugs from public facilities for sale in private pharmacies or stores, the soliciting of money from well-to-do patients or their relatives and irrational consultancy fees. It also indicted the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for corruption and abuse. The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) was also cited for corrupt practices, while the capitation grant, the school feeding programme and other interventions on the free compulsory universal basic education (FCUBE) continued to be vulnerable to corrupt manipulations, CHRAJ said. Source:Daily Graphic