Every year, Educational Institutions appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament to answer questions on financial irregularities in the Auditor-General’s (A-G) Report.
In 2019, the A-G published a Performance Audit on GETFund Scholarships, where millions were misapplied. Recommendations were made to improve efficiency, but how far have these been implemented by GETFund? Is there a reporting mechanism?
Fact is, since there is no efficient mechanism to gauge the implementation of the A-G’s findings or orders of the PAC, the same irregularities keep repeating and increasing without any decisive action on enforcement for accountability. This is why in the past three Audit Reports, over GHC 50 million was unaccounted for, with the most recent 2019 Financial Audit of Pre-University Institutions reporting about 90% increase in irregularities from the 2018 figure.
Yesterday, we petitioned the Rt. Hon. Speaker of Parliament to order the PAC to summon GETFund, the GES and Tertiary Institutions who had issues to answer in the 2018 Financial Audits and GETFund Performance Audit to first, make a submission on Implementation Progress of Recommendations in these Previous A-G’s reports before proceeding to make Public Hearings on the latest Financial Audit Reports for 2019.
This practice, when adopted into our Parliamentary Accountability System will strengthen the responsiveness of Education Sector Institutions to Recommendations of the A-G, while providing critical information for Civil Society accountability advocacy, thereby improving economy, efficiency and effectiveness in education spending.
This is part of our collaboration with Parliament to strengthen their oversight on the Education Sector.
