[ 2017-02-13 ]

Ace Ankomah, Member of pressure group, OccupyGhana

GHS7.5bn lost through public sector graft in 11yrs - Occupy Ghana
Pressure group OccupyGhana has said at least
GHS7.5 billion of the taxpayers’ money was lost
through public sector corruption between 2003 and
2014.

“In our conservative estimates based on the
Auditor-General’s own reports to Parliament from
2003 to 2014 (excluding 2009), Ghana lost almost
GHS2.5billion through Ministries, Departments and
Agencies alone.

And between 2009 and 2014, amounts lost to Ghana
through public boards, corporations and other
statutory institutions were over GHS5 billion,”
OccupyGhana said in a statement

The group said it is the “continued, blatant
theft of the nation’s monies through public
sector corruption and the apparent unwillingness
of the Auditor-General to exercise the powers of
Disallowance and Surcharge that compelled
OccupyGhana to reluctantly commence proceedings
before the Supreme Court on 21st July 2016.

That matter is still pending, and on 31st January
2017 the Supreme Court directed the parties to
file further arguments on the matter”.

OccupyGhana®, therefore, said it was happy to
that it had just received a copy of the High Court
(Civil Procedure) (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules, 2016
(CI 102), which regulate appeals to the High Court
from the Auditor-General’s Disallowances and
Surcharges.

It said since 12 November 2014, the group had been
battling the Auditor-General, urging him to
exercise the constitutional and statutory powers
of Disallowance and Surcharge, and thereby help
Ghana to recover the billions of cedis that are
lost to the nation each year through blatant and
largely unpunished public sector corruption.

In the course of that engagement, OccupyGhana®
said it discovered that the requirement under
Article 187(10) of the Constitution for the
enactment of rules of court to regulate appeals
against the Auditor-General’s Disallowances and
Surcharges had not been complied with.

On 28th May 2015, OccupyGhana said it wrote to the
Rules of Court Committee to inquire about those
rules. As a result of the subsequent interactions,
OccupyGhana was invited to submit, and submitted
to the Rules of Court Committee, proposed draft
rules for enactment as required under Article
187(10).

Subsequently, OccupyGhana said it received for its
comments the draft bill which captured almost
verbatim, the proposals it had made.

“It has always been OccupyGhana’s contention
that the Auditor-General has more power to
commence the process of recovering monies lost to
Ghana by issuing the Disallowances and Surcharges,
than the simple annual ritual of issuing
‘journalistic’ Reports to Parliament
containing mere ‘recommendations’.

“Indeed, in the words of the Auditor-General in
the 2011 and 2013 Reports to Parliament, ‘The
cataloguing of financial irregularities in my
Report on MDAs and Other Agencies has become an
annual ritual that seems to have no effect.’

Source - classfmonline.com

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