Ex-President John Dramani Mahama
Monies realized from the 10% salary cut of political appointees, including the president and the vice president and ministers from 2014, under former President John Dramani Mahama’s regime, cannot be accounted for, according to officials of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department, who appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament yesterday.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Nhyiaeso and member of the committee, Kennedy Kankam, wanted to know why no amount was recorded in the Consolidated Fund at the end of December 31, 2015 after GH¢896,457 had been captured as money realized from the 10% salary cut.
He was told by the Deputy Controller and Accountant General, Kwasi Owusu that the then Chief of Staff wrote to the office to stop the deductions and release what had been deducted to the presidency.
According to Mr Kwasi Owusu, the Accountant General’s office was holding the money in trust for the government until the directive came from the Chief of Staff.
He said that apart from the GH¢896,457 that was realized from the deductions at the end 2014 and released to the presidency, the Accountant General’s Department was not in a position to know about the status of the  deductions until John Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) left power in January, 2017.
The MP for Nhyiaeso said that the previous government promised to use that money for the construction of more Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) compounds across the country, but nothing had been heard about it.
The Deputy Finance Minister, Abena Osei-Asare, who accompanied officials of the ministry and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to appear before the committee, told journalists that the previous government should tell Ghanaians what it had done with the money.
According to her, it was a tacit promise by the previous government to use that 10% salary cut to build CHPS compounds and it should be bold to tell Ghanaians how many CHPS compounds had been built using that money and where those compounds were located.
She indicated that as of now, nobody at the ministry of finance or the Controller and Accountant General’s Department knows what the money had been used for and where the rest of it – from 2015 to the end of 2016 – went to.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr