Public officials dissipating funds with impunity – Auditor General

he Auditor General has revealed that staff of the department are getting discouraged and angry at the high level of impunity with which public officials are dissipating public funds and are left unpunished.

The Auditor General Department yearly submits its report on how state agencies spent public funds to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament.

Many of the reports have indicted public officials for misappropriating public funds thereby violating prudent financial regulations.

The comments of the Auditor General comes after the 2013 Audit report revealed that the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), Mr. Gilbert Seidu Iddi, spent an amount of GHc186, 372 on a trip to Turkey in 2012.

According to the report, the trip related to SADA and eight district assemblies that organised a sister city tour to Istanbul.

The 2013 Audit report also revealed that SADA had failed to recover an amount of one million dollars taken out of its coffers by the Finance Ministry to pay a certain construction company.

SADA also failed to retrieve over 2.7 million Ghana Cedis from Kukobila and Plus One who were engaged under the SADA initiative to produce and export sheanut squash.

Since 2013, the Authority has only retrieved 66, 000 out of the sum received.

The deputy auditor general Yaw Sefa in an interview on Morning Starr Tuesday said it is getting annoying when these public officials indicted for several corrupt practices are not punished for their actions, rendering their work virtually useless.

“You don’t expect these things to be happening the way they are, and it is like people are doing things with impunity and we are not very comfortable.

“But then when we raise these issues and we don’t even get a proper action taken, do you think it will even create an incentive for you to even want to work harder,” Mr. Sefa told host Nii Arday Clegg on Starr 103.5FM.