Accountant General to trace state properties

The Controller and Accountant General, Mr. Christian Tetteh Sottie, is on the heels of Ministries, Department and Agencies (MD As) to hold them accountable for government properties under their care.

Disclosing this to The Independent, the Controller and Accountant General said, the department will this month, April 2007, begin an exercise to register all assets of the government, which are under the control, care and maintenance of MD As.

He the exercise will not limit itself to recent years but will go back as far as it could to take stock of all government assets and to find out which ones are missing, which ones are out of use and which ones are nowhere to be found, and then ask for reasons.

According to Mr. Sottie, officials will be held accountable for what cannot be accounted for, and appropriate sanctions will be applied later.

Explaining the rationale behind the exercise, the Accountant General said government money must be accounted for while its property must be properly taken care of.

He indicated that those who have misused government property and those through whose negligence and carelessness those assets and property have been destroyed will be surcharged with the cost or charges for the repair of damaged items.

"These property and assets were acquired with government money, and so if they are misused and/or destroyed it is government money being wasted," he said and added, "For that reason people must be held responsible for them to inculcate into them the sense of taking proper care of government properties."

Government of Ghana has through its Ministries, Departments and Agencies acquired a lot of property whose value runs into trillions of cedis, but lack of proper supervision has allowed a good number of these to deteriorate.

Mr. Tetteh Sottie was quick to point out that the exercise is not an attempt to witch hunt anybody, but is designed to ensure that MDAs take proper care of state assets to eliminate from the system waste that needlessly adds to an already problematic expenditure.

Credit: The Independent