Institutions responsible for fighting corruption must deal with corrupt people to sanitise the system, Most Reverend Dr Paul Kwabena Boafo, Presiding Bishop of The Methodist Church, Ghana, has said.
He said financial irregularities and rot uncovered by the Auditor General annually should be a matter of concern for the country.
He said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency.
Most Rev. Dr Boafo noted that the financial irregularities kept occurring because the institutions were failing to punish persons implicated in the Auditor General’s Report.
“The institutions that should be dealing with corruption and to do the checks, for the Auditor General coming out with these figures, they know where all these leakages are.”
“…So the institutions to deal with the people should deal with them and make sure that it doesn’t reoccur,” he said.
He urged the government to empower and resource anti-corruption institutions to effectively discharge their mandate and block the leakages in the system.
A report released by the Auditor General’s Department in August last year indicated that Ghana lost over ¢12.8 billion due to infractions and other irregularities committed by statutory institutions in the year 2020.
Some of the infractions include contract irregularities, tax irregularities, procurement irregularities, payroll irregularities, cash irregularities, and challenges retrieving loans from debtors among others.
Outstanding debts and challenges in retrieving loans from debtors accounted for a chunk of the irregularities perpetrated by the statutory institutions, amounting to ¢10 billion, the report said.
Cash irregularities accounted for over ¢1.8 billion and procurement irregularities, ¢848 million.
“During the period ending 31 December 2020, the total irregularities recorded was 135 per cent or GH¢7,387,774,195 rise from GH¢5,468,334,006 in 2019 total irregularities figure to GH¢12,856,172,626 in 2020.
“This was occasioned mainly by a surge of GH¢5,207,442,576 or 107 per cent in outstanding debtors/loans/recoverable component of the total irregularities for the period ending 31 December 2020,” it said.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor has assured that from January this year, it would commence the prosecution of some cases that were before it.
Speaking to the media to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day in Accra last month, Mr Kissi Agyebeng, the Special Prosecutor, said the Office was currently investigating 31 corruption-related cases.
He said the Office would in due course commence prosecution of the cases it considered “probatively strong.”
GNA
