Ensure Financial Discipline – Minister

Accountants have been urged to ensure financial discipline at all levels of their operations.

The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who made the appeal, said accountants had a role to play in ensuring financial discipline and reducing financial malfeasance in the management of institutions and the state.

In a speech read on her behalf at the 20th graduation and admission ceremony of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG) in Accra on Saturday, Prof Opoku-Agyemang advised the newly qualified accountants to be diligent in their profession. Two hundred and ninety-one accountants were officially admitted to the membership of the ICAG. Besides, 264 students also graduated as accountants.

Out of the graduates, 229 passed their professional examinations in May and November 2012, while 35 students completed the Accounting Technicians Scheme West Africa (ATSWA) in March and September 2012. Mr Mucahilla Salifu and Mr Benedict Yaw Darkwah emerged first attempt best students in the May and November professional examinations, respectively.

“You should not lose sight of the principles of the profession because society demands diligence from you,” Prof. Opoku-Agyemang told the accountants. In her address, the President of the ICAG, Mrs Angela Peasah, urged the newly qualified accountants to keep the ethics of the profession.

“If you do not abide by the ethics, you become a liability to society. We are gatekeepers and the salt. If salt loses its taste, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men,” she said.

For his part, the Dean of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) School of Business, Professor Joseph M. Frimpong, who was the guest of honour, urged young aspirants of the accounting profession to persevere to achieve their dream of becoming accountants.

He urged the graduates to refrain from greed, insatiability and self-indulgence and rather act professionally in the best interest of society.