Administrator-General orients newly created regions

The Office of the Administrator-General (OAG) has since August this year, been conducting series of regional orientation workshops for the six newly created regions on the preparation and maintenance of Asset Registers for government/state assets and properties.

A statement signed by Mr Daniel K. Binful, Acting Public Affairs Officer, OAG, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the workshop forms part of the OAG’s planned activities for 2019.

It said the key objective of the workshops was to build the capacities of participants to prepare proper Inventory and Assets Registers of all state assets and properties vested in the care of, and/or use by, public officers of the new regions.

It noted that fixed Assets remained the biggest portion of government’s material resources and also the largest component of government expenditure every year.

The statement said the six new regions – Western North, Ahafo, Bono East, Oti, Savanna and North East – were created in February 2019 by Constitutional Instrument (CI) 113 out of the then existing 10 regions.

It said following that, government allocated various assets and properties to establish Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) in order to facilitate governance in the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) that fall under their respective operational areas.

It said the OAG had since been liaising with the RCCs of the new regions to help responsible officers working in the various MMDAs establish standardised Asset Registers and Inventory of all state assets vested in their care.

It said participants were drawn from the Fixed Assets Coordinating Units of the assemblies, whose periodic submissions were being collated for the National Register of State Assets and Properties.

It said the workshops essentially draw participants’ attention to the OAG’s establishment law and other Public Financial Management regulations to prepare them for the tasks ahead.

It said participants were also taken through interactive forums to deliberate on seaming challenges related to the processes for redress.

It said Regional Ministers (RMs) and Regional Coordinating Directors (RCDs) of the new regions have been collaborating with the Administrator-General, and have been present at all the orientation workshops to stress the importance of the exercise.



The statement said RMs and RCDs had demonstrated a keen interest in the exercise by charging their officers to ensure that the prescribed processes were meticulously followed to ensure that all assemblies under their jurisdictions were fully compliant with the related regulations.

It said Mr David Yaro, the Administrator-General, personally chaired and addressed all the workshops.

The statement said it was gratifying to note that all the collective efforts were already yielding positive and encouraging results, as many of the participants and responsible officers attend the orientation sessions with data collated using data template provided by the OAG beforehand.

It said plans were in place to extend the orientation workshop to cover all 16 regions in Ghana by the end of December 2019.

"In recent history of transitional processes in Ghana, ownership of some state assets have become one of the key causes of avoidable rancour amongst political actors which seem to characterize our otherwise peaceful handing-over of reins from one political administration to another," it said.

It said to facilitate peaceful transitional processes in Ghana, the OAG is determined to ensure that state assets and properties were properly accounted for by all responsible public officers in conformity with prescribed format and standards it had developed.

It said the OAG was the statutory body charged through its establishment law–the Presidential (Transition) Act 2012, Act 845–to manage the smooth transfer of reigns of democratic governance from one administration to another in Ghana.

The statement said that mandate requires the OAG to maintain a National Register of all state assets and properties, to make recommendations to government and to contribute to national policy formulation.