The Auditor-General, Daniel Yaw Domelevo, has served notice that his outfit will soon make public the names of individuals and institutions that have been surcharged and expenditure disallowed against them According to the Auditor-General, the naming and shamming exercise is expected to also serve as a deterrent to public and civil servants who waste government’s scarce resources.

Speaking to the B&FT, at the sidelines of the inauguration of the Controller and Accountant General Department’s (CAGD) ‘Audit Committee’ in Accra, Mr. Domelevo said public and civil servants will have to end the practice of using public resource for unintended purposes.

“We should say never again to public resources being used for unintended purposes, whilst our people still remain poor. This is just not acceptable. We have started the fight at the Auditor-General and I pray my certificates do not come to the Accountants-General’s office. We have also started disallowing expenditures and we will be surcharging people and as I said, we have begun that. I will soon produce a report of those who have been surcharged and expenditures disallowed against,” the Auditor-General disclosed.

Mr. Demelevo further noted that the misuse of public funds is very disturbing considering the liabilities of Ghana, as a management report put together and submitted to the Ministry of Finance revealed that, more than 50% of the liabilities did not exist.

“We can all see that as a country, we are begging and borrowing money to develop, but others are being wasteful and spend monies which are not to be spent,” he said.

The Auditor-General assured the gathering of his outmost commitment to ensuring that together with other agencies, the government payroll is cleaned-up.

“What this means is that anything that is wrong about the payroll we will make sure that, we recover. So, I would like to ask the Accountant-General’s outfit to take a critical look at the payroll and pensions because there is a lot of garbage in there.”

Inaugurating the Audit Committee, a Deputy Minister of Finance Hon. Abena Osei Asare asked its members to ensure that it is independent, firm and committed.

The Audit Committee is expected to provide the necessary assistance to Management of CAGD in the implementation of any recommendation contained in an Internal Audit Report, Parliament’s decision on the Auditor-General’s report, Auditor-General’s Management Letter and the report of the Internal Monitoring Unit in the Department among other functions.

Mr. Eugene Ofosuhene, the Controller and Accountant General said, “the establishment of the Audit Committee has come at an opportune time now than ever before in the annals of Public Financial management in Ghana.”

The Audit Committee has a membership of four, comprising Elsie Bunyan as the Chairperson Nathan Yankey, Alex Kwaku Dey, and Kwasi Owusu.