Key Members of the IAA Launching the Celebration
The Director for Internal Audit Agency (IAA), Eric Oduro Osae, has revealed that the agency has saved the country approximately GH¢7.8 million cedis through the activities of internal auditors across the country.
According to the director, GH¢ 4.5 million, which could have been lost through irregularities in the payroll of public institutions, was saved in the first quarter of 2023 through a collaboration with the Agency and the Fair Wages and Salary Commission (FWSC).
This, he said, was done through cleaning up the public payroll in a monthly monitoring and auditing exercise of the Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (ESPV) of public institutions.
The director also shared that Audit committees across the country uncovered over GH¢3.3 million payments and processing of transactions outside the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) thus saving the country a huge sum of money.
He therefore lauded the efforts of internal auditors across the country and called on the government to improve the conditions of service for them as they are poorly paid and would need further motivation to keep excelling in their work.
“Government should therefore rationalize the conditions of service of internal auditors and pay them the same way they pay their colleagues at the Controller and Accountant department and the GRA because they are the eyes and ears of the government in institutions,” he highlighted.
The Director shared this information at the launch of the 20 year anniversary of the Internal Audit Act, 2003 under the theme; ‘Relevance of Preventing Corruption in Ghana Through Institutional Collaboration; The Role of Internal Auditor.’ The celebration is expected to be observed for a week and is dubbed ‘Internal Audit Awareness Week.’
Chairman of the Internal Audit Board, Joseph Winful, also stated that the IAA was aiding institutions to adopt a Risk-Based Internal Auditing (RBIA) system to help the agency achieve best practices in their services.
“To ensure effective use of internal audit resources in the form and manner required by the Public Finance Management Act 2016 (Act 921), the IAA is supporting public institutions to move away from the conventional pre-auditing and adopt the RBIA.
Every enterprise, when you look at a chat of their activities, shows that almost every cycle of activity involves risk and assessing the risk and using it as the bases for effective internal auditing activities,” he stated.
By Abigail Atinuke Seyram Adeyemi