Director of Technical, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), Benjamin Adjetey has called on government to as a matter of urgency restructure the public sector internal audit function in order to strengthen its role in the fiscal consolidation efforts of government.

Government by the Internal Audit Agency Act, 2003 (Act 658) established an Internal Audit Agency as an apex oversight to coordinate, facilitate, monitor and supervise internal audit activities within Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in order to secure quality assurance of internal audit within institutions of state.

But according to him, the current law and structure of IAA does not empower them to effectively supervise, manage and regulate the practice of internal auditing in the public sector.

Speaking at a stakeholder sensitization workshop on “Restructuring Public Sector Internal Auditing”, Benjamin Adjetey said the internal audit function in the public sector is being practised more as an operations function in organisations, rather than as a third line of defense as it should.

He indicated that operation of the internal audit function has not made their profession very effective because they are narrowed down to only financial controls and compliance functions.

“The association of internal auditors who are the practitioners of internal auditing public service of Ghana, they are the people who do the work; they know the challenges they go through. So they made a case to the public services commission for the consolidation of the internal audit resource because they know that that is what is going to help them to be professional that they know they are, to do the work they know they should do, and that has also not yielded the needed results despite the fact that attempts were made”, he said.



Internal auditors cry over poor conditions of service

Speaking to the media at the workshop, the Chief Internal Auditor at the Ministry of Energy, Ernest B. Wiafe highlighted some challenges faced by auditors in the country. He bemoaned the poor conditions of service stressing how low their salaries are and how they are not properly catered for.

According to him, “It’s only in Ghana that I know that internal auditors are not catered for. If you look at the remuneration it’s so poor, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. Same qualification with the accountant, same professional body but the accountant is paid four times what the auditor gets, other benefits he doesn’t because we are strictly under the civil service. So many of the professional auditors have all left and you can’t engage new ones because the condition of service is very poor”.

He therefore appealed to government to improve their conditions to better their standard of living for it to attract more young people in the audit sector.