Acting Auditor-General, Johnson Asiedu Akuamoah
Programmes Manager of Ghana Integrity Initiative, Mary Awelana Addah, has said that intensifying the digital agenda in the country is one of the surest ways of fighting corruption.
She explains that digitization in our institutions reduces the human factor which is likely to increase corruption.
Her statement comes at the back of revelations made by the Auditor-General’s report which suggests that there have been corruption, financial mismanagement, and misappropriation as well as bad contractual agreements in some public offices.
Speaking on how the state can reduce these incidents, Mary Awelana Addah told Samuel Eshun on e.TV Ghana’s ‘Fact Sheet’ show: “Digitization still remains one of the key antidotes to our fight against graft and the pilfering of the public purse. It is key because when we digitize the processes, then the human element is reduced.”
She further explained that just like in the computerized placement system for schools, “there continue to be some elements that infiltrate that system and you will get people who do not deserve to be in certain places being there but then it [digitisation] is still the best way forward.”
While stressing the need to intensify the digitisation agenda, she added that monitoring, tracking, and supervision should be present.”
“The supervision should be as strict and rigorous and very regular as possible. This is because the system cannot work itself. It is human beings who man these systems and so if the element of supervision is lax, people will definitely take advantage,” she added.
The Audit Service has, for the first time in 10 years, presented to Parliament all the 12 statutory Auditor-General’s Reports, including four performance audit reports required to be made available to the legislature by June 30, each year.
Among other things included in the report, for instance, it was revealed that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), between 2014 and 2016, procured prepaid meters and conductors worth ¢59million, but the machines are still locked up in the company’s warehouse.
According to the report, ECG procured the 265 meters and conductors but at the time of the auditing in 2019, the meters had not been deployed.