The Association of Internal Auditors (AIA) of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have called on the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) to implement the recommendations of their reports on the MMDAs to boost their performance.

According to the President of the Association, Mr Paul Ankrah, failure to implement their reports was leading to non-performance and making them “laughing stocks at the assemblies because we are perceived to be auditing for nothing,” he lamented.

Addressing the National Conference of the Association in Koforidua, Mr Ankrah tasked the IAA to ensure that all the MMDAs had in place the Audit Recommendations Implementation Committees (ARIC) because some of their recommendations were urgent to safeguard the national purse.

He said as per their mandate, the AIA raise issues concerning prudent financial management of the assemblies in their quarterly report, which were often ignored and that, he said, was de-motivating to their members and therefore called on the IAA to address the issue.

Mr Ankrah alleged that, by the nature of their work, internal auditors easily became targets of hatred especially by the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) and management in general.

He said often the slightest issue raised by Internal Auditors lead to rift and the transfer of their members without any cause and therefore appealed to the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCC) to stop transferring internal auditors based on complains and request of chief executives.

The Deputy-Director General of the IAA, Mr Ransford Agyei, assured members that, most of their recommendations had been put into policies regarding systems and operations of the Internal Auditors and added that, all MMDAs would be directed to institute an ARIC.

He also touched on the issue of transfers based on political interference and disclosed that such transfers had been brought to the attention of IAA, and had been addressed appropriately.