Madam Gifty Twum-Ampofo, a Deputy Minister of Education, has expressed concern over the many financial infractions of public tertiary institutions in the annual reports of the Auditor-General.
The Deputy Minister, who made the observation on Wednesday at the public sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament in Accra, to consider the 2019 Auditor-General’s Report, appealed through the Committee Chairman to the Auditor-General to ensure that the financial accounts of public tertiary institutions were audited regularly on yearly basis.
Madam Twum-Ampofo said for some time now they realized that the nation’s tertiary institutions were committing too many financial infractions, she therefore, appealed through the PAC to the Audit Service to ensure that the financial accounts of public tertiary institutions were audited every year.
This, she said, was because the financial infractions at the public tertiary institution were simply too many; saying “..and you can’t understand why?”.
“If something is going on that the Audit Service are not able to audit our tertiary institutions yearly, then let them prioritize our tertiary institutions, because actually their books always have too many infractions,” Madam Twum-Ampofo said.
“And these infractions to the outsider looks as if it is political infractions, meanwhile the bulk of them are with the tertiary institutions”.
Dr James Klutse Avedzi, the Chairman of PAC, said Parliament had no power to instruct the Auditor-General to go and do audit.
He noted that Article 187(8) of the 1992 Constitution states that it was only the President with the concurrent of the Council of State, who could ask the Auditor-General to do some audit in the public interest.
“Even we, Parliament cannot instruct the Auditor-General to go and do audit. Isn’t it interesting? Even though his work ends in this Parliament. So, you are right, if it is something that we could have done, we would have done it easily.
“But I think that there is the need to look at that portion of the constitution again, if it should be amended, to ensure that at least that Auditor-General can be asked by Parliament to go and do some audit,” the Chairman said.
He said the Auditors have heard the Deputy Ministers appeal and that he thought that they might have taken some notes.
Source: Ghana News Agency
