The Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Joseph Whittal says the Commission is cash-strapped and unable to operate as it ought to.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he stated that over the years CHRAJ has been sorely underfunded leading to debt payment delays and this has hindered the smooth running of the Commission.
He noted that despite a budget allocation of 45 million cedis, only 2 million cedis have been released for operations and 9 million cedis for salaries and compensation.
“And as at now when I check the figures we don’t have up to 2 million for the year for goods and service. We have a very paltry sum for Capex and it’s not even been released yet. So that is the situation we find ourselves,” he said.
“We have sent the money to the regions for the regions to operate whilst we wait on maybe 3rd quarter and that may bring something meaningful. On top of that you know government is a continuum so we have made some expenditures last year that were not met because 4th quarter was not released, so we have creditors on our neck, they want to be paid and so when 3rd quarter comes I’m believing that we may have to pay them. And the rest will be what we will be using to do the work for the Commission,” he added.
Mr. Whittal explained that the underfunding of the Commission undermines its ability to fully and efficiently carry out its core mandate to the vulnerable in society.
“We’re supposed to be the ordinary person’s go-to institution who cannot go to court to have issues of dispute resolved, to have human rights, for ombudsman, and for the anti-corruption. And so if you do this to this institution, which the framers of the constitution actually wanted to take care of the ordinary person who cannot access any other service which is paid for then you’re really hitting at the belly button of the vulnerable and that is why we’ve been insisting that it doesn’t take much to make this institution work,” he said.
“It doesn’t take much. If you look at the type of figures, and not that we don’t know, we know the type of figures that go to certain institutions, certain ministries; service is not only about particular ministries and what they dole out this is ordinary service to the ordinary person and on top of that we’re dealing with fighting corruption, fighting conflict of interest, educating people, creating prevention at the same time so what are we doing if we don’t resource these bodies?” he stressed.
He noted that in recent times, much of the Commission’s work has been desk bound as there is not enough resource to conduct the necessary field work.
“Investigation is about going out. And really going to the field to look for evidence, interview people, gather documents, come in to the office, only to write a report. If you don’t front load the investment into investigation nobody can go to the field because it takes money to go to the field.
“It takes resources to buy fuel, put in a vehicle, or a motorbike to go to the field. If that doesn’t happen what we do is do the easy work which is desk bound. And when the public is insisting we have these cases CHRAJ is delaying unfortunately it’s not the fault of CHRAJ.”