Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has described the Minority’s petition to the Auditor General over the Covid-19 lockdown expenditure as a distraction.
Oppong Nkrumah said the Minority is always looking for ways to bring up controversies to distract the government from their Covid-19 response programme.
“…looks for an opportunity to raise some controversies in the hope to distract us from the Covdi-19 response programme.”
Explaining how audit procedures are he said it is premature for anybody to call for a special audit by this time.
“Anybody who has done basic accounting and auditing, the financial year usually will have to end and then the one who is executing the task will prepare his accounts and then the auditor will come in and audit. In Ghana when government agencies that are doing whatever it is finish their work prepare their accounts at the end of the financial year of which the accounts are audited by the Auditor-General.”
He said because the programme is still ongoing a special audit cannot be conducted.
“Section 16 0f the Audit Service Act says in addition to this audit the Auditor General may also conduct a special audit as we speak the Covid-19 response programme is still ongoing all of you are here because the programme is still ongoing and interventions are being made it has not been completed. The accounts for the 2020 financial year is nowhere close to operation. It will be prudent for all of these exercise to be completed for the accounts to be put together for the Auditor General to do a standard audit and if he believes there is a reason to go further and do special audit they will. In this context, we can all understand how premature this call for a special audit when the programme has not even ended.”
The Minority in Parliament has formally filed a petition with the Auditor-General to audit government expenditure on food and water government supplied to the vulnerable during the three week COVID-19 partial lockdown period.
The petition invokes Section 16 of the Audit Service Act, 2000 (Act 584), and calls on the Auditor-General to undertake a Special Audit into the expenditure on the GHS 280.3 million that was allocated for the provision of food and water under the Coronavirus Alleviation Program (CAP).
The Petition jointly signed by the Ranking Member on Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson and Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak further indicates that the audit they anticipate will clear all doubts about how the funds were utilised.
