‘Punish wrongdoers in public service’
Speakers at the fifth annual Accountability Lectures organised by the Audit Service have called on the government to sanction people found culpable of various misdeeds in the public service.
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They said the government needed to exercise the political will to bring those found culpable to book to give impetus to the quest for greater public accountability.
In the main, the five speakers at the lecture, held in Accra last Wednesday, expressed worry over the inability of the government to enforce sanctions against erring public servants, as captured in the annual reports of the Auditor General (AG) and later by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament.
According to them, the non-enforcement of recommended punitive action against people is undermining public confidence in the ability of state institutions to live up to expectation.
Emile Short
Leading the call was Mr Emile Short, a former Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), who said the lack of follow-ups on recommendations by the AG and the PAC often led to errant persons being let off the hook, which was a bad signal.
He said because of that, the same mistakes made by persons or institutions kept recurring year after year, adding, “The necessary sanctions and public prosecutions should follow as the surest means of ensuring accountability.”
Mr Short said it was for that purpose that the financial courts were set up but, for reasons not too clear, the courts were not fulfilling their mandate.
Prof Omane-Antwi
When he took his turn, the President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG), Prof. Kwame Boasiako Omane-Antwi, said “the inability of the PAC to prosecute public officers who had been found to be in breach of financial discipline limits the effectiveness of the accountability mechanisms put in place”.
Dr Nii Moi Thompson
The Director-General of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Dr Nii Moi Thompson, in his contribution, said the PAC had served as a useful mechanism in checking corruption through the exercise of its oversight responsibilities over the AG’s reports.
He, however, said that concerns continued to be raised over the refusal to use PAC as an effective tool for fighting corruption as a result of the non-implementation of its recommendations.
Prof Stephen Adei
A former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof. Stephen Adei, gave two reasons the findings of the Audit Service had not made any impact.
He said the AG had not exercised his power under the enabling legislation, while government machinery, particularly the Attorney-General’s office, was unwilling to prosecute offending public officials.
Auditor-General
The AG, Mr Richard Q. Quartey, said the Audit Service could only attain the desirable status of a strong, dynamic and independent instrument of accountability if all stakeholders of the service played positive, active and supportive roles to the auditing, regulatory and advisory functions of the service.