Vice President of policy think-tank, IMANI Ghana, Kofi Bentil, has called for the scrapping of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Authority (GYEEDA). This he says, would help salvage the economy from current wastage and abuse of the public purse.
He added that, a look at the analysis of the concept itself clearly shows that it wasn’t capable of achieving what it wanted to.
He recalled that: "when we criticized the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP), what we said in President Kufuor’s time was that, as much as the intentions were good, you were creating a vehicle which can easily be turned to a corrupt end and become a slashed front for siphoning money. We were prophetic in saying that".
Contributing to a conversation on Tarzan’s Take last Sunday on Multi TV on how to protect the public purse, Mr. Bentil bemoaned the practice where the Executive arm of Government exceeds it budget spending without any proper regulations and sanctions.
He stressed that, whether monies were raised off the financial markets, through taxes or oil, there must be clear boundaries checks on people who overspend.
He proposed a fiscal responsibility bill, in addition to the existing appropriation bill, which will make persons disbursing and overspending public funds personally liable. He revealed that, for about two years now, IMANI and other groups, including the World Bank, has been having discussions on proposing a fiscal policy bill that ties in with the expenditure of the Executive.
"The Executive should have a fetor on how much it can spend, that fetor is set by Parliament, and it must not be able to go beyond it, except with the authority of Parliament" he added.
He further explained that Government overspends because it raises various sums of money straight off the markets, people sign agreements, which constitute expenditure and "clearly going beyond what Parliament has by law given to them".
Mr Bentil generally attributed Government’s expenditure to plain corruption, ineptitude, ill- conceived and implemented social intervention schemes such as single spine, LESDEP, MASLOC, GYEEDA and others, which often spring up during an election year.
