Daniel Domelevo
The Auditor-General, Daniel Domelevo, seems to be enthusiastic about the level of support and cooperation he gets from the Akufo-Addo government.
He thinks it has assisted him in the discharge of his constitutionally mandated duty than any other government.
Speaking at the Audit Service/OccupyGhana anniversary lecture in Accra recently, he made an open admission that “the Executive has been very supportive.”
Even though he indicated that the problem about Africa is that we set up all these structures and we don’t fund them, he was however quick to add that “but in Ghana I have received not everything that I wanted but a substantial increase in support.”
“I must say the Executive has played its part. I hope you are aware when there was a change in government , the first announcement we heard was a ban on procurement of vehicles… but this was the time government gave us the permission to buy 34 vehicles to support the Audit Service. We had never bought 10 vehicles in the history of the Audit Service before, but this permission was granted up till today some people are struggling to get clearance to recruit staff,” an obviously elated Domelevo told his audience at the British Council Hall in Accra.
Apart from that, he indicated “as of today, we have recruited from 2017 to date more than 400 additional staff just to support us to do our work.”
He could not but noted with emphasis that “I must say that it has been a collaboration and I love it a lot.”
On his part, Vice-President Bawumia said the government of Nana Akufo-Addo is stepping up the fight even further. He indicated that over the past two years financial and human resources available to the Auditor-General for the discharge of his constitutional mandate have increased.
He revealed the total budget for “Goods and Services” which is also the money used in financing audit activities carried out by the Ghana Audit Service stood at GH¢14 million in 2016 but only GH¢9 million was released to the service.
In 2017, however, he noted that the current administration released GH¢19 million to the Audit Service for goods and services, while in 2018, a total of GH¢33 million was released and the budget for 2019 is GH¢35 million.
Similar increases in allocations and releases, according to him, have been done for CHRAJ.
He, therefore, noted that “the government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is putting in place the systems and institutions that will help us, going forward.”
As a government, Dr Bawumia said “we remain committed to making corruption unattractive on a sustainable basis” and called for collaboration and strengthening of institutions mandated by the Constitution and other laws of the country to protect the public purse.
The Vice-President, therefore, applauded all those bold citizens who stand up against corruption and the embezzlers of public funds.
