Former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC), Dr. Kan Daapah has revealed that the reason for the high financial leakages in the public sector is due to the shielding of corrupt officials by politicians.
Financial seepages, in the public sector, costs the economy over GHS2 billion annually. Economists and the IMF have asked government to take measures to seal these leakages in order to minimize aid-dependency and excessive government borrowing.
Speaking at the Annual Internal Auditors Conference, Dapaah disclosed that recommendations made by the PAC, after investigating how funds are expended in the various ministries, agencies and departments (MDAs) do not even get to the floor of Parliament for onward submission to the Judiciary.
The former PAC Chair said although Parliament is an institution mandated to introduce accountability in the public sector, no such work is done there as their recommendations don’t even get to the House, as a whole, for further discussions.
“The Judiciary is the body to sanction these corrupt officials but to do so, it must go through Parliament, but the work that my committee did, couldn’t see the light of day. The politicians sat on it. Not one of the various sittings that I had, went through Parliament to get to the judiciary, “he alluded.
Donors, for the past three years have withheld direct budgetary support to the country worth US$700 million government, therefore, urgently needs domestic revenues to pay salaries and finance other projects.
The new Public Financial Management, (PFM) Act, passed in 2016 is yet to have an impact on financial management of the public sector.
The internal audit system in the sector is also said to be under severe attack, as finance officials allegedly gang up to frustrate internal auditors in blocking leakages.
The Senior Minister Yaw Osafo-Marfo, speaking at the event, urged auditors to get tough in blocking malfeasance in the sector.
He said the auditors are required to play a competent role of ensuring that control systems are effective for improved accountability and performance in the sector.
He added that “with the new PFM, we want to assure Ghanaians that we would allow the law to work effectively to ensure people who are entrusted with responsibilities of protecting public funds are held responsible for their actions and inactions.
Source: goldstreetbusiness.com
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. |
massa, this is not what we need at the moment, those that are guilty of stealing our money in the NDC government, why don't they go ahead and prosecute them? don't give us lectures
Sometimes these politicians are always in the cruise control mode when they come out to spill their toxic lies and hypocritical critique in which they always pretend that they have no knowledge of what is going on and have never been involved in these stilling rampage in parliament; take the case of Osafo Marfo ; a political hypocrite and a thiff with the last NPP government under Kuffour ; this is a political criminal who advocates that people should no more be employed within the public service and civil service whilst at the same goes out of his way to bring his children from London and provides them with jobs whilst other people cannot find work ; just like Nana Addo ; the NPP is practising NEPOTISM by the day by giving jobs to their relatives ; as for Ken Dapaah was he not the same politician who was the chair of PAC and was telling frineds who borrowed monies and stoole monies how not to party the monies ; SO WHAT ARE THESE NPP KRIMINAL POLITICIANS TELLING US ; THESE HYPOCRACY MUST STOP!!!!!!!!
What about the Auditors, who checks them to make sure no collusion goes on between them and the people/departments/companies they are auditing?
Is he Kan not one of them?