t has been established that the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) paid the Audit Service GH¢350,000 to audit its books.
GETFund says the Auditor General, Daniel Yaw Domelevo, presented GH¢350,000 budget to enable him to conduct the recent audit which outcome is generating public furore.
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In his request letter, Mr. Domelevo indicated that the money was for fieldwork and logistical cost.
According to GETFund Administrator Richard Boadu, his organisation made the request to the Auditor General to carry out the audit since he was taking over as the new head of the entity in 2017.
Mr. Domelevo wrote in a reply to GETFund asking for resources to execute the assignment, drawing a budget of GH¢350,000 eventually.
Even after paying for the auditing, GETFund says it never had a copy of what it virtually called a sloppy job.
“We requested the audit. I have proof of giving them GH¢350,000 to do the auditing because they claim they don’t have money. They then brought a draft and asked that we add 2017 and 2018 to avoid the accusation of witch-hunting previous administration,” Richard Boadu stated on Peace FM Kokrokoo morning show.
The Auditor General had claimed in a letter dated May 5, 2017 to GETFund that the need to release the money was necessary since there had been a delay in obtaining funds from the Ministry of Finance.
“We would be grateful if you could release the sum of GH¢350,000.000 to cover fieldwork in and outside Accra as well as other logistical cost and management review. This is because of the delay in obtaining funds from Ministry of Finance for the exercise,” Mr. Domelevo indicated in his letter.
After releasing the money to the Auditor General, the GETFund Administrator said his organization never heard from the auditors about the final report until he read in the newspapers about the news of the auditing, creating hullabaloo.
Strangely, the report, Mr. Boadu said, was widely circulated on social media as well as the traditional media without GETFund having a copy to peruse.
“What I don’t understand is why they didn’t give us the final copy when we made a request for the auditing? We saw it in the newspapers. It should have gone to Parliament and then to the Public Accounts Committee, and then we will be called to respond but not on a radio station. But I realized he is going around talking about the issue, and so I decided to speak out because we have nothing to hide,” he stated.
In his report, the Auditor General had indicated that scholarships were shared like kelewele to Members of Parliament, children of politicians and journalists, among other favoured class, leaving out needy students.
The report caused public outrage following the publication of names of beneficiaries, with some of the alleged beneficiaries denying ever applying for GETFund Scholarship support.
This casts doubts in the performance of the Auditor General.
The GETFund Administrator noted that the report fell short of their expectations.
“Even looking at the report, we realized it fell short. It seems he intentionally captioned it: Members of Parliament, politicians, media practitioners and so on awarded scholarship. According to him (Domelevo), they are not needy; hence should not be given the scholarship,” Mr. Boadu rubbished it.
He said even if Mr. Domelevo failed to furnish GETFund a copy of the report, he wanted the report to be submitted to Parliament for onward transmission to the Public Accounts Committee … instead of circulating it on social media for mischief purposes.
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By Fortune Alimi
