Auditors call for better conditions of service

The Association of Internal Auditors in the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) has called for better conditions of service to be able to manage government resources at the assemblies effectively.

According to them, exclusion of internal auditors from management meetings, projects management and capacity building for key staff of the assemblies, are great hindrance to the effective operation of internal auditors.

Mr Paul Ankrah, the National President of the Association, who made the call at the opening of the Association’s two-day delegate conference in Koforidua, noted that, the current relationship between the management of the various MMDAs, especially the Chief Executives and the Internal Auditors is not good to achieve the set objectives.

According to the President, by the nature of their work, “we easily become target of hatred in the assemblies resulting in irrational transfers of internal auditors who are only performing their core duties of ensuring prudent use of national resources”.

He alleged that Chief Executives and Coordinating Directors of MMDAs specifically, as those who often do not cooperate with them in the performance of their duties, thereby sidelining them in programmes such as management meeting, budgeting and projects management.

Mr Ankrah, therefore, called on the Internal Auditors Agency (IAA) to address these issues to ensure a defined role and status of the internal auditors at the assemblies to enable them to perform their core function of safeguarding the national purse at the assemblies.

He also appealed to the IAA to ensure that, all the district assemblies had in place, the Audit Report Implementation Committee (ARIC), as stipulated by law, to ensure that the quarterly internal audit reports from the assemblies were implemented.

The Deputy-Director General of the IAA, Mr Ransford Agyei, assured the conference that, his outfit was working to improve the conditions of internal auditors, including putting measures in place to protect them from transfers ignited by the Chief Executives.

He also announced that plans were advanced to synchronize their working conditions with that of other internal auditors at the Controller and Accountant Generals Department and all other public sector internal auditors.