The Auditor-General’s report has found that wages earned by prison inmates who worked for Zoomlion Ghana Limited were not given to them, rather the Service spent the money on funeral donations, water, tuna, snacks, bus repairs and other items.
The report puts the total figure of the money at GH¢277,625, which was meant to have gone to the inmates, but the Prisons Service spent it.
The Minister for the Interior, Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, has told Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the money has been refunded to the Auditor-General’s recoveries account.
However, he said the affected inmates, some of whom have since been released from prison and are demanding their wages were being told the money was no longer with the Prisons Service.
The issue came to light when the Prisons Service appeared before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, to respond to findings in the Auditor-General’s report on its inmate support programme. Mr Muntaka, the sector minister led the Service’s delegation to the hearing.
The audit found that inmates engaged by Zoomlion were paid GH¢3 a day less than the GH¢10 rate stipulated in their contract. The difference was deducted as their feeding allowance.
An auditor told the committee that, according to the Service’s response, officers made the deductions without management’s approval. Management asked the officers to explain their actions only after the audit report was issued.
Mr Muntaka said the inmates were entitled to about GH¢10 a day, and since inmates working outside prison were not supposed to carry cash, he explained, the GH¢3 was used to buy water for them.
He said the officers failed to keep proper records of the expenditure and were consequently ordered to refund the money.
Mr Muntaka said former inmates who returned to claim their money were told that “the money is not with us, it is with the Auditor-General”.
He said auditors had instructed the Service to pay the money into the Auditor-General’s recoveries account. He added that he had contacted the Auditor-General to explain that the funds belonged to the inmates.
According to him, officers, fearing possible sanctions, transferred the money into the account.
He proposed that the funds be returned to the Service for payment to the inmates or former inmates should be directed to the Auditor-General’s office to claim their wages.
The auditors said they had recommended that inmates still in custody be paid first, with only the balance transferred to the recoveries account.
They told the committee that officers had reported unsuccessful attempts to contact released inmates but declined to provide their telephone numbers, citing the inmates’ human rights.
A representative of the Auditor-General explained that the recoveries account served as a transit account through which funds were transferred to the Consolidated Fund.
She said the Auditor-General could not withdraw money from the account but added that the Prisons Service could apply to the Minister of Finance for its release, subject to validation by the Auditor-General.
The PAC chairperson, Abena Osei Asare said the matter pointed to weaknesses in record-keeping and financial controls.
She directed the Service to introduce measures to prevent a recurrence and hold officers responsible for the deductions and handling of the money accountable.
