The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) is raising concerns about its annual budget, saying the amount is not enough.

The office insists it is inadequate, especially given the challenges the office inherited after the former Special Prosecutor left office.

Speaking on ‘The Law’ on JoyNews, the Director of Strategy, Research, and Communication at the OSP, Sammy Darko, explained that the current team met only an empty building and has had to rely on its limited annual budget to build the office from the ground up.

“We have been building this office from scratch, which means apart from an empty building that was donated to the office, the office had to be built from scratch, which means that you need to develop all the divisions of the office, you need to employ people, you need to put in place the infrastructure..."

"Remember that the office was also set up without an establishment budget, so the office is being built from the annual budget, which is not enough."

He believes more could be done by the office if it were better-resourced.

"So I'm saying that the office has had problems, people think that the office was just there and everything is there, even as we speak, we do not have a forensic lab.”

The OSP has recently come under scrutiny, with critics accusing it of failing to deliver results despite the substantial budget allocated to the office annually.

But Mr Darko says the office is still young and continues to grapple with structural challenges.

Breakdown

Since 2018, the OSP has received a total allocation of GHs1.2 billion, with average annual releases hovering around just 50%.

The biggest component of the OSP'S budget comes from its salaries.

This year, a total of GHs71.8 million out of the budget is expected to be used to pay workers of the OSP, higher than goods and services, as well as capital expenditure.

As of September this year, the OSP had already spent GHs52 million to pay workers, with only GHs6.6 million spent on capital expenditure