Ministry Of Health To Surcharge Accountants

Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyemang Manu has warned that accountants at the various agencies of the Ministry of Health will be surcharged if they failed to provide payment vouchers to curb the recurrence of financial irregularities.

Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament in response to queries raised by the 2015 Auditor General’s report against the Ministry, Mr. Manu said the measure which is a policy decision by the Ministry will help curb the menace of annual financial irregularities.

The Minister’s revelation came in the wake of a question posed by deputy Northern Regional Minister and a member of the Committee, Solomon Boar on the status of recovery of some GHc1,923, 454.83 lost as a result of non- presentation of payment vouchers for auditing by the Ministry.

According to the Minister, the infraction is part of the old irregularities that is relative to every sector hence his outfit will surcharge offending officers especially accountants to prevent its recurrence in future.

“We have worked to try to resolve all these matters, by the Ministry what we trying to do now is that, we ourselves we will begin to surcharge ourselves, so if you are an accountant and you can`t produce vouchers to support payments we shouldn’t sit for anybody to come to Public Accounts Committee, so going forward, the new policy with IGF concentration and things like that, we will begin to surcharge accountants who refuse to give us these vouchers’’ he said.

Source: Christian Kpesese/ thePublisher