These monies must be recovered

Accountability means ensuring that officials in public, private and voluntary sector organisations are answerable for their actions and that there is redress when duties and commitments are not met.It is the obligation of agencies and public enterprises that have been entrusted with public resources to meet the fiscal and social targets they are assigned.

These agencies need to be accountable to the public at large and carry out their duties responsibly.

It is, therefore, worrying that more than GH¢ 2 billion was lost to the state due to financial irregularities by public and statutory organisations in 2012 alone.

They resulted from irregularities in cash and payroll management, tax and procurement, stores and contract irregularities and outstanding debtors, loans and recoverable charges.

According to the report, the state lost more than GH¢116.3 million to cash irregularities arising out of the misapplication of funds, overestimation of funds needed, outstanding imprest, payments not authenticated and cash shortages.

Some of the losses have occurred as a result of poor supervision, lack of control, management’s failure to review approved budgets and failure to demand receipts for payments made.

The report also highlights the failure of some accountants to properly file and keep records, management’s failure to ensure the security and safety of vital documents and the laxity in ensuring that accountants adhere to what is stipulated in the Financial Administration Act and other relevant regulations.

 Payroll irregularities also led to the financial loss of GH¢251.8 million to the state. The payroll lapses, according to the report, were caused by the failure of management to exercise due diligence and failure of officers in charge of payroll to review payment vouchers to ensure that salaries were paid to only those who were entitled.

The report also accuses the management of some public organisations of failing to notify bankers to halt the payment of unearned salaries.

The loopholes were mostly in the areas of payment of unearned salaries to separated staff, non-payment to chest of the unearned salaries and payment to staff members who were not entitled to those salaries.

The loopholes also resulted in procurement irregularities of more than GH¢50.5 million in 2012. This, according to the report, occurred in the procurement of goods and services without recourse to the procurement committees, contrary to the provisions in the Public Procurement Act.

The tax irregularities were related to misapplication of tax revenue, failure to pay statutory deductions on due dates as required by law and the non-adherence to provisions in the tax laws. They also included the transacting of business with non-VAT registered persons.

These irregularities include the non-documentation of store items and fuel not accounted for, resulting from the absence of store ledgers; lack of awareness of officers assigned to store duties; inadequate supervision; deficient and improvised log books and managements’ failure to procure records.

Contract irregularities were also captured in the report. The anomalies in contract sums mainly relate to non-performance of contract, variations of conditions of contract without following procedures, non-specification of mode of payments and the failure to deliver in contract agreements and ineffective control over contracts.

We expect the Auditor-General to do what is right in the eyes of the law and recover all these monies without fail or let. The guilty public officials whose actions and inactions led to these losses must be prosecuted, because that is what the law says.GB