Daniel Yaw Domelovo
The Auditor-General, Daniel Yaw Domelovo, has written to the Member of Parliament (MP) for Akim Swedru, Kennedy Osei Nyarko, one of the politicians whose name was among beneficiaries of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) scholarships to study abroad.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP who is also a Deputy Minister of Agriculture has been insisting that he was never a beneficiary as being portrayed by the Auditor-General’s audit and subsequently directed his lawyers to write to Mr. Domelevo to clear his name within 24 hours or face him in court.
Less than 24 hours after the threat was issued, Mr. Domelevo has written to the MP, saying that the information was supplied by the GETFund and not from the audit service.
Mr. Domelevo, in a letter addressed to the Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, stated that his entity only relied on the information supplied by the GETFund during the audit process.
The letter added that there was no bias or malice intended at any individual named as beneficiary of the GETFund in their audit report.
Threat
In a letter, the Akim Swedru MP had threatened to sue the Auditor-General for adding his name among high-ranking public officials including politicians, lecturers and journalists who were given scholarships to study abroad by the GETFund.
Mr. Nyarko said he was never a beneficiary as being portrayed by the Auditor-General’s audit and had directed his lawyers to write to Mr. Domelevo to clear his name within 24 hours or face him in court.
In a strongly-worded letter titled, “Request for immediate retraction and to render unqualified public apology to Kennedy Osei Nyarko,” the MP’s lawyers, Safo&Marfo@Law, said Mr. Domelevo’s action regarding the MP “is grossly unprofessional, bias, unethical, incompetent and was merely intended to cause public disaffection,” for the MP.
The letter signed by his lawyer, Gary Nimako Marfo, said that a simple cross-checking of fact would have given the Auditor-General an indication that the MP was not a beneficiary of the GETFund scholarship award as they had portrayed in the media.
It added “interestingly you failed to indicate any amount of money for which our client has benefited from the GETFund to pursue the said studies.”
Response
But the Auditor-General has replied the MP saying his audit team only relied on the information provided them by the GETFund during their work and urged the MP to direct his grievances towards the GETFund.
“It should be noted that the information contained in the audit report was from the audited entity and in this instance every information or names that were contained in the performance audit report on the GETFund came from the GETFund, the audited entity. Certainly, my office has no malice of bias toward any individual named as beneficiary from the GETFund in our audit report. Your grievance, therefore, is best addressed by the GETFund which provided the audit team with the necessary information and names of beneficiaries during the audit,” Mr. Demelovo’s letter to the MP indicated.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak