News:
August 23, 2010
Many District Municipal and Metro Assemblies in the country spent close to seventy percent of their allocations on administration to the detriment of developmental projects, the Public Affairs Director of Parliament, Jones Kubglenu has disclosed.
Speaking to Joy fm’s Mahama Shayibu in Tamale at the first meeting of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament Mr. Kubglenu said the Assemblies which failed to answer queries from the Auditor General’s report between 2001 to 2004, will not get parliamentary approval of their allocations for next year.
Parliament is also worried that many of the assemblies did not take serious action on pursuing their internally generated funds.
The Parliamentary Select Committee is expected to hear from 21 districts in the Northern, Upper East and West Regions on how expenditures were made over the period under review.
Opening the meeting, the chairman of the select committee Albert Kan Dapaah said the exercise is part of Parliament’s responsibility of ensuring that the tax payers’ monies are prudently spent by government.
He disclosed that due to misappropriation and other forms of irregularities, the state lost 58 billion old Ghana cedis from the period 2001 to 2004 in the various Assemblies.
He said even though Chief Executives, Finance Directors and Coordinating Directors of the Assemblies who will be appearing before the committee may not have been available at the time the expenditures were made, they can still answer queries because at the time the Auditor General submitted the audit report of the assemblies in 2009 they were in office.
Mr Dapaah said 59 out of the 138 Assemblies nationwide failed to submit their financial statement to the Auditor General due to irregularities in expenditures and warned that those culpable would not be spared.