Technocrats Top Public Sector Fraud

The Member of Parliament for the Kade Constituency in the Eastern, Kwabena Ohemeng Tinyase has blamed technocrats for majority of the recurrent financial malfeasance in the public sector, causing the state to lose several millions of Ghana cedis.

According to him it is only 10% of the financial irregularities that are caused by political heads.

He blamed the chunk of the irresponsibility on technical people within the public sector who he said have a better understanding the system and are experts at manipulating it to their selfish interests.

“There are a lot of things that are administrative lapses, and the technocrats play a greater role. The political contribution might be just be between 5-10 %, a greater part of the malpractices, malfeasance that’s going on is more with the technocrats, and they tend to understand the system better, especially for politicians who are not administrators, and who don’t have the accounting backgrounds, the technocrats manipulate the system to  their disadvantage so that, where even they (politicians) are involved, you see that by the ignorant of the system, they are outwitted and the technocrats have their way,” he alleged.

The Kade MP who is a member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament and, disclosed these in an exclusive interview with THE PUBLISHER to review the just ended Public Accounts Committee of Parliament’s sittings.

The Committee sittings considered the 2015 Auditor General’s report on Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

Hon Tinyase advocates a comprehensive moral training for technocrats within the public sector to ensure honesty and help prevent the annual financial irregularities that have caused the state several millions of Ghana cedis.

He also called for improvement in the public sector financial management system through the quality of personnel recruited and service delivery to end the incessant abuse of public funds that could have been used for the provision of needed public goods.

The regular trends of financial irregularities reported by the Auditor General includes the payment of unearned salaries, payment for works done or items purchased without VAT receipts and the failure by managements to follow laid down procurement processes to ensure value for money.

Another major irregularity is the delay releases of funds to statutory institutions by the central government to enable them perform their assigned roles effectively.

These delays result the in payments of salaries to workers without being productive.

Source: Christian Kpesese