The Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA) has been ordered by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament to return GH24,388.00, which lavatory attendants failed to account for over a period of time.
That came after the Auditor-General's Report for 2020 accused the assembly of failing to recover the specified sum out of a total of GH27,388.00.
Surprisingly, the gathering only succeeded in getting GH3,000 from the attendees.
The instruction was delivered on Monday at the Atlantic Hotel in Takoradi when the assembly went before the committee.
Dr. James Klutse Avedzi, the committee's chairman, noted that, in accordance with the Auditor-General's Report, Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) had 30 days to provide documentation for each infringement during the audit period.
"If you don't do this by the deadline, your name will be listed in the report to Parliament, and we'll have no choice but to allow you to get a refund for the money.
"Therefore, the coordinating director, finance office, revenue superintendent, and metropolitan chief executive must collectively refund the money," he stated.
"It is not our responsibility to be collecting committee-level material.
"Compliance is important because the law is pretty clear about that, he continued.
According to Dr. Avedzi, MMDAs are supposed to be responsible and knowledgeable about the Public Financial Management Regulations 2019 and DACF standards.
deteriorated restrooms
However, the Metropolitan Coordinating Director, John Owoo, said that because most of the restrooms were in poor condition, the violation was not intentional.
He saw that the majority of the colonial-era franchise toilets that were dispersed across the city had outlived their usefulness.
Kofi Adams and Nana Adjei Boateng, the representatives for Buem and New Juaben North, respectively, felt that the assembly should have sent the auditors a report on the condition of the restrooms rather than waiting to discuss it in front of the committee.
A previous district chief executive was told by the committee to give the Shama District Assembly a 32-inch television within a month.
After District Chief Executive Ebenezer Dadzie and his colleagues indicated that the previous DCE had replaced all goods with the new ones following a break-in at his home, with the exception of the television,
Also cited for squandering the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) by GH 15,720.00 was the Wassa Amenfi Central Municipal Assembly.
The committee recommended that the assembly update its documentation.
According to the report, the Nzema East Municipal Assembly should get a refund of GH 149,682.82 (10% of its DACF), as only GH 50,000 has been paid by the assembly thus far from its Internally Generated Fund (IGF).
All told, 14 MMDAs testified before the committee and received citations for overspending, abandoning projects that weren't budgeted for, a lack of paperwork, payments to contractors for work that hadn't been completed, and failure to deduct withholding taxes, among other things.
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