News:
June 16, 2017
Vice chairman of the Public Account Committee and Member of Parliament for LambussieKarni, Dery Edward Kaale-Ewola says the recent Supreme Court ruling will boost the workings of the Public Account Committee.
The Supreme Court has ordered the Auditor General to immediately begin surcharging persons found to have misappropriated public funds.
“As a committee it has always been our wish that we have the powers to operate, but because we are within a certain confine jurisdiction we do not have the powers to go to some extent that the public expect from us”.
He further noted that, he agrees with the outcry of members of the general public that, the Public Account Committee is not biting enough, adding that they are not mandated to prosecute, rather it is their recommendation that can lead to prosecution, but it is very difficult for people to understand.
He said the best they can do is to end with their report at the plenary level when its debated and the need be, then the RT Honorable Speaker will recommend to the Attorney General to prosecute. “But I must say the move by Occupy Ghana is a laudable idea and as time goes by we hope Ghanaians will begin to have confidence in the workings of the Public Account Committee” he added.
The Vice chairman observed that, the issue of deterrent has always been the key word of their work and they try to use that as a process to deter people from engaging in the misappropriation o fpublic funds. “As we speak in the first meeting of the committee a lot of people have gone behind to re-fund misappropriated funds” he said.
“Just last week, the Auditor General reported to us that people are paying funds into the consolidated fund the miss link which I appreciate about the committee is that, we did not report the recovery of funds we have made to the public,” he lamented.
He therefore stated that the committee will make available updates of all the recoveries they are making to the public through the media, so that they can win back the confidence of the public.