Auditor General Warns Public Servants: You Have To Go Home @ Age 60!

The Auditor General, Mr. Daniel Domelevo, says any public servant who has attained the age of sixty years has no option than to proceed on retirement, unless the government gives him or her a five-year contract.

He said his outfit will not entertain anyone who has gone beyond the mandatory retirement age and the five-year contract granted by the government on the payroll of the state.

Quoting Article 199 of the 1992 Constitution, he insisted that public servants must retire at age 60 and nothing else.

According to him, the strict adherence to the law is to make room for the numerous youth who are looking for jobs after completing their university education.

He vowed to investigate and expose all those cheating the system by refusing o go after achieving the mandatory retirement age.

Mr. Domelevo was addressing the 5th Delegates Conference of the Audi Service Divisional Union of the PSWU in Kumasi yesterday.

It was under the theme: “The Role of the State Auditor in Protecting the Public Purse.”

According to the Auditor General, countries with high unemployment rates always experience instability and vowed to weed out all the over age people in the system to pave way for the youth.

Domelevo was also worried that people who are no more in the employment of the government still have their names on the government payroll, because departments and agencies they worked at are not showing any interest in getting their names off the payroll.

The Auditor General lauded the government for giving the service its budget allocation, revealing that his year his outfit will focus on government contracts procurement audit. This, he said, is aimed at correcting leakages and wastage of scarce government resources.

The Senior Minister, Mr. Yaw Osarfo Maafo, who was the Special Guest of Honour, charged the Audit Service not to be only interested in expenditure, but also focus on revenue leakages at the ports and other government installations.

He expressed worry over Ghana’s revenue to GDP discrepancies per ECOWAS database, which is 16%, but 12% in Ghana, a development he said, needed auditing actions to correct.

The Senior Minister denounced corruption, saying it is the enemy of the poor and must be stamped out of Ghana.

The Board Chairman of the Audit Service, Prof Edward Dua Agyemang, expressed worry about the small number of staff of the service.

While he called for the recruitment of skilled people into the service, he urged them to be wary of their attitudes wherever they find themselves.