The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described the attitude of the Funeral Planning Committee (FPC) of the late President John Mills as a smack of arrogance.
The dissolved Committee which was tasked to organize the funeral and the burial ceremony of late President John Evans Atta Mills has said it does not have the mandate to make public the breakdown of the cost of the funeral.
According to them, they followed due process and all such questions concerning the breakdown of the total cost for the ceremony should be directed to the office of the Chief of Staff.
The committee also indicated that the report is scheduled to be audited by the Auditor General who will verify the account and forward it to the Public Accounts Committee.
But the NPP however said it is in the best interest of the members of the Committee to declare the details.
In an interview with Citi News, the General Secretary of the NPP, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie stated that �it is in their own interest to let Ghanaians and the world know how much went into all this. But if they say they don�t owe us any disclosure, it amounts to arrogance of power that we have always experienced from the NDC so we will wait and see.�
Meanwhile, Anti- corruption body, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has advised the committee to come clean on this issue.
The Executive Director of GII, Vitus Azeem explained that �for us to be able to make judgment, whether it was reasonable or not reasonable, whether it was too much or too small, the best was for them to have told us a bit of some breakdown. Audits normally come after the end of the year and so we are talking about waiting till about March maybe up to June 2013 before we get to know.�
He described the event as a special event which was not a normal activity of government �so if it is something like that people are interested in knowing how it went. For transparency and accountability, there is nothing wrong in telling us.�
<<Print>>