W/R: Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to Recommend The Prosecution Of Some Heads of Senior High Schools

The Public Accounts Committee, PAC of Parliament is to recommend some pre-tertiary educational institutions for breaches of the Public Financial Management Act and the Procurement Act.

At the opening of its five-day public sitting in Takoradi to consider the financial report of the institutions ending 31st December 2018, the Bonzo Kaku Senior High School in the Ellembelle District, Archbishop Porter Girls SHS in Takoradi, St Augustine’s SHS at Bogoso in the Prestea-Huni Valley Municipality and the Tarkwa SHS were founded to have breached the Procurement law through uncompetitive procurements.

The Committee is to recommend for the prosecution of the heads of the said institutions.

The Chairman of the PAC, James Klutse Avedzi explained that, many institutions take the Auditor-General’s report for granted because they are not prosecuted for the various infractions of the law. 

“In the past, we have never refer institutions or individuals for prosecution, so it looks like they are taking advantage of that. We’ve decided that, now if you go against the law, we will recommend you for prosecution. So you go to court and defend yourself.

If the court thinks that, your defense is sufficient enough , they will set you free but if your defense is weak, the court will apply the law. The objective is to ensure that it serves as deterrent to others, so heads of institutions whenever they are going into procurement will ensure to follow the procurement law to save money for development,” he mentioned.

Mr Avedzi said issues that came up from the pre-tertiary educational institutions in the Western Region include unsupported payments, unrecovered rents, unrecovered salaries and misappropriation of funds among others.

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“The issues are a number of infractions covering cash irregularities, procurement irregularities, payroll, unearned salaries and the rest. Our objective as a committee is to ensure such infractions do not occur in the first place. These infractions are resources that government should have used for development of the country.

So if these infractions are occurring, it affects government development agenda, so our objective is to ensure that the schools do not allow these infractions to occur,” Mr Avedzi noted.

-Schools