DCE In Trouble For Lying

THE MUNICIPAL Chief Executive (MCE) of Mfantseman, Kweku Hayfron, is in hot waters as he faces sanctions from the Public Account Committee (PAC) for refusing to report one Amadu, a revenue collector who misappropriated GH�34,000 belonging to the assembly, to the police. Mr Hayfron, in an attempt to cover up for Amadu, had negotiated with him to pay the money in installments without any interest. This came to light at the first public hearing of PAC at Elmina in the Central Region. As part of the sitting, the committee will raise questions about the Auditor-General reports on the account of district assemblies in the Central and Western regions as well as consider financial reports from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2007 on the management and utilization of funds for the assembly. The MCE, who failed to give tangible reasons on why he was not able to report the revenue collector to the police, started laughing, a situation which compelled Albert Kan Dapaah, chairman of PAC, to reprimand him to stop laughing since they were not joking. �Stop laughing since we are not joking with this issue. Will you be laughing if the money actually belongs to you? Why should you allow one person to spend monies meant for development of many people? Let me tell you this, your wife will never visit you at Nsawam when the government imprisons you for that,� Mr Dapaah stated. Mr Hayfron, who swore an oath to tell the committee the truth, lied to them that the assembly owed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) an amount of GH�4,000, whilst the actual amount was GH�34,000. The chairman produced a letter written by IRS District Director at Mfantseman and copied to the PAC to order the assembly to pay the GH�34,000 since it was attracting more penalty, a situation which compelled the MCE to start sweating profusely. The Effutu MCE, Nii Ephraim, dressed in his �fugu� was the first person to be called by the committee to give his account. Mr Ephraim, who was not able to submit receipt to cover an amount of GH�21,000 he claimed to have spent on the assembly, told the committee that the Auditor-General refused to collect it when he submitted it to them with an allegation that it did not tally with the amounts. Mr Dapaah therefore gave the MCE three days to re-submit the receipt back to the Auditor-General�s Department for checks. He charged the DCEs to handle public resources entrusted to them well for the betterment of all Ghanaians.