Legal practitioner Martin Kpebu says for effective governance, civil societies need to pressure Auditor General’s office to be independent for effective disallowance and surcharge duties.
This comes after the Auditor General published reports on the misappropriation of taxpayers’ money across various public institutions, raising concerns amongst the public if this was going to be a norm without remedies or punishment meted out to the officials who engage in such acts.
Speaking on Citi TV’s Big Issue, Mr. Kpebu said party affiliations made the retrieval of funds from some government officials difficult, hence the need for pressure from civil society.
“A lot of officials who keep this money often have political affiliations, that is why the surcharge duties are not effective to be blunt some of these public officials have connections in government making recovery of funds difficult.”
He further explained the pressure will lead to accountability from public officials and prevent others from indulging in such acts.
He then made reference to the Supreme Court reinforcing the Auditor general’s surcharge duties in 2017 due to the efforts of a civil society called Occupy Ghana.
“The interest of civil societies is for the Auditor-General office to up its game in recovering taxpayers’ money from these officials like the Supreme Court did in strengthening the Auditor General’s hand in the Occupy Ghana case making it mandatory for the Auditor General to collect government revenue from private pockets this will ensure accountability and deter like-minded people from seeking to take money from the public purse.“
Source: Citi Newsroom
