Public Accounts Committee begins 2022 sittings - 3 ministries and their agencies quizzed
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has commenced sitting for the 2022 year to scrutinise the Auditor-General’s Reports on the Public Accounts of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), for the year ending 2018.
The Committee, chaired by the Deputy Minority Leader, Mr James Klutse, last week focused on the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, focusing on the departments and agencies that fall under these three ministries.
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The agencies that were zoomed in included the Controller and Accountant General’s Department, Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), and the Tema Oil Refinery.
Others are the Headquarters and Treasury Payroll of the Ghana Education Service, Ghana Library Authority, Model Nursery School, Ghana Education Service - Ada East District, among others.
Ghana Revenue Authority
Appearing before the committee, officials of the GRA gave an assurance that it was on course to automate its systems to block all leakages in the collection of revenue in the country.
This follows the failure of the authority to account for the auctioning of 1,719 confiscated vehicles during the period 2015 to 2017 in the recent Auditor General’s report.
In its 2018 report on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), the Auditor-General disclosed that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) could not provide proper documentation on the reserve price list of the vehicles, auction sales report and internal audit report covering the auctioning of 1,719 confiscated vehicles which amounted to a loss of over GH¢25 million between 2015 and 2017.
Explaining the issues to the committee, the Commissioner of the Customs Division of the GRA, Colonel Kwadwo Damoah (rtd), said the GRA was using a manual auctioning system at that time, which made it difficult to keep records of the processes.
He, however, noted that the GRA has been able to produce documentation covering 1,622 of the vehicles, which had been forwarded to the Auditor General, hence leaving 97 vehicles unaccounted for.
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The Commissioner-General, Rev Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, for his part also assured the committee that his outfit had adopted the use of a new automated system that would end such losses.
“We are automating the process and we are far advanced. In fact, we are expecting that before the end of this month, we would have finished the process. With the automation that we are doing, we expect that this problem will be significant, if not completely eliminated. We’ve talked about dishonoured cheques that we used to have a lot of times and since we automated the system, it completely vanished.”
“We have talked about issues about reconciliation between banks. At that time, we had just two banks but we had reconciliation problems. Today, we have 22 banks and we don’t have such problems because of the automation. In the same way, as we are automating this process, we are confident this digitalisation will help us to remove these problems,” he explained.
Ministry of Education
Zooming in on the Ministry of Education, the Public Accounts Committee directed the Ghana Police Service to trigger an Interpol red alert for the arrest of a former teacher of Pantang nurses and midwifery school, Ms Afia Nyarkowaa.
This also follows the 2018 Auditor General’s report which indicted the said teacher for drawing salaries while on study leave, but failed to return after her studies.
Authorities who appeared before the committee on Tuesday, February 8, explained that it’s been difficult getting Ms Afia Nyarkowaa to refund the monies to the state.
Chairman of the Committee, Mr Avedzi, therefore asked the police to trigger an Interpol red alert for her arrest.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
In another turn of events, the committee gave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration a week to verify and report to the committee how a firm that was paid US$60,000 as consultancy services fee for the construction of a residency at Ghana's Mission in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was incorporated.
The firm, Glinco Construction Engineering Limited, was paid the said amount by the then Ghana’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Alhaji Said Sinare, and a former Head of Chancery, Mr Martin Adu Ago, on January 3, 2017.
The committee also gave the ministry one month to get in touch with Ghana's former Ambassador to India, Mr Sam P. Yalley, to find out how an amount of US$3,900 given to him as imprest was dispensed in 2018 and report same to the committee.
At the committee's sitting, the issue of when Glinco Construction was registered with the Registrar-General’s Department became a bone of contention.
While the Auditor-General’s (A-G’s) report of 2018 said the company was incorporated on January 7, 2017, three days after the said amount had been paid, a memo written by the ministry and shown to the auditors at the sitting indicated that the company was registered in 2013, hence the directive by the Chairman of the committee, Dr James Klutse Avedzi.
Sitting continues this week.
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