Ghana Auditor Common reveals violations in use of Covid 19 funds

After Senegal, Ghana is the newest African nation the place officers have been referred to as out for misappropriating or mismanaging funds devoted to preventing the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Ghana audit service report on the federal government’s covid-19 expenditure for the interval going from March 2020 to June 2022 is extensively commented on social media.

In all, GH¢21,844,189,185.24 (over a billion US $) was mobilised to mitigate the impression of COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana.

The 119-page lengthy report highlighted irregularities within the administration of some tranches of the funds.

Amongst them, the fee of unapproved threat allowance on the ministry of data. It appeared that “senior administration workers and different supporting workers” of the ministry paid themselves a complete quantity of GH¢151,500.00 as COVID-19 threat allowance for coming to work throughout the lockdown interval.”

That went towards “presidential directives and with out approval from the workplace of chief of workers.”

Certainly solely frontline well being employees have been to obtain a further allowance of fifty % of their primary wage monthly for March, April, Could and June.

Failure to take supply of vaccines

Based on the report, the authorities did not take supply of some COVID-19 jabs it paid for. The Ghanaian Ministry of Well being paid an quantity of US$120,192,379.80 to UNICEF/AVAT for the provision of vaccines.

Nonetheless, simply “5,109,600.00 doses of vaccines valued at US$38,322,000.00 have been equipped to the Nationwide Chilly Room.”

The chief director of the Ministry of Well being defined that the quantity was paid in anticipation of receiving all of the vaccines inside a brief area of time for vaccination within the nation.

He cited “sudden vaccine donations into the nation, coupled with restricted vaccine storage capability and the sluggish uptake by Ghanaians to be vaccinated” as components that made it unattainable to obtain the Janssen “vaccines that had been paid for”.

This was leaving a distinction of over 81 billion US$.

Some Ghanaians took to Twitter to voice their disappointment and tagged the report #NPPGrandCovidTheft.

The Ghana audit service carried out the audit in accordance with its statutory mandate and following a request by the Minister for Finance.

Many officers in sub-Saharan Africa are suspected of misappropriating or mismanaging funds devoted to preventing the Covid-19 pandemic, together with in Cameroon, Guinea and South Africa.