The group Occupyghana has stated that it may be forced to engage in legal action in the face of failure by the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice to comply with the decision of the Supreme Court of Ghana in the case of OCCUPYGHANA v ATTORNEY-GENERAL.
The group, in a letter dated yesterday June 7, 2022, stated it was a follow-up to a letter dated June 30, 2021.
“On 30 June 2021, we wrote to you on the above-entitled matter (our ref OG/2021/002), requesting information on whether or not you have complied with section 85(2) of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921), which requires you to submit annual reports to the Finance Minister, Auditor-General and Parliament on actions that you have taken on behalf of the government following the Auditor-General’s annual reports and Parliament’s recommendations,” the letter said.
Occupyghana stated that in the letter of June 7, 2022, it also reminded the Attorney-General of the decision of the Supreme Court in OCCUPYGHANA v ATTORNEY-GENERAL, that ‘the Attorney-General is hereby ordered to take all necessary steps to enforce the decisions or steps taken by the Auditor-General… to ensure compliance including in some cases criminal prosecutions.’
“We then indicated that as citizens of Ghana, we were interested in ascertaining whether you had satisfied these demands of the Act and the Supreme Court. We therefore requested, in line with article 21(1)(f) of the Constitution and section 18 of the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989), that you provide to us:
(i) a list of all actions that your office has taken since
(a) 2016 when Act 921 was passed, and
(b) 2017 when the Supreme Court decision was made;
(ii) the status of all such actions; and
(ii) copies of
(a) the annual reports that you have submitted in line with section 85(2) of Act 921, and
(b) actions and processes taken pursuant to the Supreme Court decision.
“We further indicated that while we would appreciate it if the information was delivered to us in hard copy and/or electronic form, and we were happy to provide the necessary computer drives for the electronic format.
“It has been almost a year since we delivered the letter to you. You have neither acknowledged receipt of the letter nor provided the information we seek.
“We write to repeat our constitutional demand for the information. If you fail or refuse to respond to our demand, we shall commence legal proceedings against you, including filing a petition to the Right to Information Commission,” Occupyghana stated.
The letter, which is addressed to the Attorney-General was also copied to the Speaker of Parliament, the Minister for Finance and the Auditor-General.
