Vaccinate public boards, others against irregularities virus – Kwaku Azar writes

A United States-based Ghanaian professor, Professor Kwaku Asare has urged the government of Ghana to immediately address the challenge of irregularities in public boards, statutory corporations and other statutory institutions.

Describing it as a virus, he said “the irregularities virus in our public boards, statutory corporations and other statutory institutions keeps mutating into more lethal forms” and called for serious medial measures to address it.

The renowned professor made the comment in a Facebook post sighted by GhanaPlus.com on Friday, August 13.

Vaccinate our public boards, statutory corporation, others against irregularities virus – Kwaku Azar writes

The professor, popularly referred to as Kwaku Azar put the issues of irregularities in the statutory corporations and other statutory institutions this way and profess solutions which he described as vaccination to that effect.

“The irregularities virus in our public boards, statutory corporations and other statutory institutions keeps mutating into more lethal forms.

The total irregularities for 2016 was a dangerous ¢718,085,208. By all standards, this was unacceptably high and called for serious remedial measures.

Remarkably, no such measures were forthcoming.

Thus, unsurprisingly total irregularities surged to ¢12,002,880,339 in 2017.

The virus appeared to have lost its mojo in 2018 when it fell precipitously to the still dangerous level of ¢3,007,258,924 only to rebound to ¢5,468,398,431 in 2019.

In 2020, the virus mutated to the Sigma variant and inflicted a record ¢12,856,172,626.

GOGO calls for immediate vaccination of our public boards, statutory corporations and other statutory institutions.

The nature of the vaccination is as follows:

1. Immediately confirm an Auditor-General.
2. Blacklist those who sat on the Boards of the offending institutions. The effect of the blacklisting is that affected persons are disqualified from sitting on any public Boards for 10 years.
3. Institute a robust surcharging regime, as part of a funds recovery regime.
4. Identify criminal activities and prosecute those whose actions are willful.
5. Professionalize Boards. That means a specification of minimum skill, knowledge, experience, education and training (SKEET) needed to be appointed to Boards, followed by allowing qualified people to apply to and be selected by the Public Services Commission.
6. Allow the Boards to appoint executive officers, using the appropriate SKEET template.
7. Impose immediate sanctions, including criminal prosecutions, on all Boards and corporations that have violated the Public Financial Management Act by failing to comply with the disclosure regime therein.

The 2020 irregularities of $2.2 billion is not something that we must accept as business as usual and move on with our more interesting lives.

We must treat it as a deadly virus and emplace the necessary financial, remedial and employment protocols immediately. We must also vaccinate our state enterprises against irregularities now.

#SALL is the cardinal sin of the 8th Parliament.

Source: GhanaPlus.com