A political analyst Mr. Alex Emmanuel Nti has said that many things have happened over the past few years that have weakened anti-corruption institutions in Ghana.
Speaking on Plan B FM late afternoon show with Ohene Kinnah, Mr. Nti called on the president and the anti-corruption institution to discuss several issues, including the Auditor General’s report for the year ending 2020, which shows consistent mismanagement and abuse of public funds over the years.
He asked the government to take steps to deal with the matters in the report.
He stressed that sometimes the reports show that six different types of financial irregularities (cash irregularities, payroll irregularities, procurement irregularities, tax irregularities, stores irregularities, and contract irregularities) continue to plague the nation’s finances.
“They will steal the money and invest the money and when alarm blows they will return the principal money without any punishments, their properties won’t be confiscated to serve as a deterrent to others” he added.
Meanwhile, the 2022 Auditor General report has indicted two account officers of the Greater Accra Regional Department of Urban Roads for embezzling GH¢1.9 million between January 2020 to March 2022. They are a former Greater Accra Regional Accountant and accounting staff of the department. While the Regional Accountant alone embezzled about GH¢1.6 million from fraudulent withdrawals, both of them on separate occasions collected a total revenue of GH¢333,851 but failed to account for the revenue. It was uncovered in the Auditor General’s report on public accounts of ministries, departments, and agencies.“We noted that the accountant, and an accounts staff, collected a total revenue of GH¢333,851.00 for the period January 2020 to March 2022 but failed to account for the revenue.“Our review showed that between January 2020 and March 2022, the department approved a total amount of GH¢214,730.00 for various activities but the Regional Accountant altered the amounts in figures and words on the various cheques and withdrew a total amount of GH¢1,799,509.38 resulting in a fraudulent withdrawal of GH¢1,584,779.38,” the report stated. The Auditor General, therefore recommended that the Ag.
The Regional Director of the department should recover the amount of GH¢333,851.00 from the two staff without delay.“We also recommended that the Ag.
Regional Director recovers the amount of GH¢1,534,779.38,” it added.
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