A Research Analyst at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Gilfred Asiamah, has called on government and other state institutions to address people’s perception about them in relation to corruption.

According to him, the 2021 Ghana Integrity of Public Services Survey report shows a growing distrust of state officials and state institutions by the general citizenry and this, he says, is very damaging for the country’s democracy.

The 2021 Ghana Integrity of Public Services Survey had revealed that Ghanaians perceived the Police, the Office of the President, Members of Parliament and Judges and Magistrates as the most corrupt groups in the country.

Reacting to the findings on JoyNews’ PM Express, he said, “I think corruption as has been explained over and over has a very damaging effect in terms of public trust and confidence in key institutions. And some of these institutions we’re talking about are the pillars of our democratic governance.

“So if we don’t address people’s perception about some of these institutions, it may be having damaging consequences on the way we govern and even on the way people accept our democracy.”

He added that even though the majority of Ghanaians still prefer democracy, they are generally becoming more and more dissatisfied with how democracy is practiced in the country.

“And if you look through the data, you’d realize that even though people prefer a democracy as they want for themselves, you’d also realize that people’s satisfaction of democracy is running low. It’s been decreasing over time.

“And some of these explains why people are not satisfied with the way democracy works, because they believe that people who have the opportunity to be at the elms of affairs tend to benefit more than they the ordinary people and that’s why you see these high levels of perception of corruption and low trust in these institutions,” he said.

He has thus called for training and retraining of public officials on ethical standards and levels of integrity so that they will be mindful of their roles as public officials and be conscious of promoting integrity as they offer their service to the citizenry.