Audit Service Board in a ploy to frustrate Domelevo

Anti-corruption campaigner, Vitus Azeem, has described the Audit Service’s posture towards Domelevo as a means of frustrating the Auditor-General.

According to him, he fails to comprehend why the Audit Service will challenge the nationality and date of birth of Mr. Domelevo at a time when he is just resuming work from his forced 167 days leave.

A day to Mr. Domelevo’s return to work, the Audit Service Board challenged the nationality and retirement age of the Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelevo as it states that Mr. Domelevo is a Togolese and was born in 1960 hence was due for retirement on 1st June 2020.

Reacting to this, however, Vitus Azeem told Happy FM’s Don Prah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ Show: “This situation shouldn’t be arising at the Auditor’s General’s office especially as the Board Chair is a former Auditor General. He should know the importance of the audit service. He should be working to improve the efficiency of the Auditor-General and not to rather frustrate him. So, it is unfortunate that this happened.

I haven’t seen the records that he [Board Chair] is using but they are suspicious because when you employ somebody you take the person’s personal particulars and so at the time that the Auditor-General started working in the office, his particulars would have been taken. They would have known where he comes from and all that. So why is it all this while, these issues never came up. All of a sudden these are coming up when he is resuming work from this uncalled-for long leave”.

Vitus Azeem believes that all these occurrences go a long way to institutionalize corruption when we should be fighting corruption.

He also expressed concern on why the President had remained silent on all these happenings.

“If you have appointed people to help you fight corruption, why would you frustrate them or not allow them to do their work? At least, today, the President should have come out to say something but he is very silent”, he added.

Auditor-General Daniel Yao Domelevo has resumed work today, Wednesday, March 3, 2021, after 167 days of forced leave.

He returned to the job despite the latest impasse with the Audit Service Board.

In the latest impasse between him and his supervisor, the Audit Service Board has written to President Akufo-Addo challenging his nationality. The board has also written to Mr Domelevo raising concerns over his date of birth claiming he has reached retirement age.

In a recent correspondence, the board said “Records at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) completed and signed by you indicate your date of birth as 1st June 1960 when you joined the scheme on 1st October 1978. The records show that you stated your tribe as Togolese and a non-Ghanaian. That your home town is Agbatofe.

Mr Domelevo in response said: “Either my father wrongly mentioned Agbatofe in Togo as his home town to me, or I misconstrued it at the time… My mother is also a Ghanaian.

“The register has Yaw as part of my name and also provides my date of birth as 1st June 1961 – this corresponds with Thursday or Yaw- the day of the week on which I was born.”