President Kufuor Worried About Information Leakage

President Kufuor is growing jittery over the increased leakage of confidential information to the public through the media. He has cautioned those working in public institutions against the practice, making it clear that his administration will demand nothing less than total loyalty and commitment from the civil service.

In an apparent reference to the leakage of information that the government intends to prosecute the editor of the Ghanaian Voice, the president warned that the repeal of the criminal libel law is not an end in itself.

The publication by the Ghanaian Voice of a memo from the information ministry to the security capos on one of former president Jerry Rawlings controversial speeches has introduced to Ghanaian journalists, for the first time, a law under which many of them can be prosecuted.

The memo, according to the Ghanaian Voice confirmed former President Rawlings speech about disenchantment in the military and directed that measures be put in place to solve the problem.

For many journalists, not only in Ghana, reliance on leaked official and confidential documents is almost a matter of course. Publication of news stories based on leaked documents has been going on in this country for long, with opposing politicians and the media always in possession of fat documents from the ministries and other governmental organizations. Governments are only concerned when that information used is detrimental to it, the positive ones go without problem.

Some say, the NPP then in opposition had access to lots of documents, but now in government, President Kufuor is getting disturbed with the increasing rate at which documents classified confidential is becoming public knowledge. He told workers at the presidency- Castle OSU that his administration has suffered too many leakage of confidential information by civil servants.

Unhappy about the confidential memo on Jerry Rawlings, the President said the leakage to the media was unfortunate, reminding all that the criminal libel, repealed by his government is different from the abuse of State Secrecy. He warned that anybody caught disclosing state secrets would be severely punished. The memo suggested contrary to the controversy Jerry Rawlings statements created, that government had a different view to the propaganda going on at the time.

President Kufuor told the Castle workers that government need sacrifices to lift the nation up. In his words, "You are the heart and nucleus of government machinery and if you show signs of laxity it would create problems for other sectors of the government machinery".