David Yaro
The Administrator-General of Presidential Estate, David Yaro, has lamented the poor cooperation from government agencies in compiling data on state assets and properties.
According to him, the non-compliance of some state agencies in providing data on the acquisition of state assets was hindering the work of the Office of the Administrator-General (OAG) which is charged with the responsibility of building a comprehensive data of government assets for smooth transition of governments.
He said following the transition process which took place in 2017, the OAG undertook steps to ameliorate the shortcomings which included poor compilation of data on state assets and properties.
In view of that, Mr. Yaro said the OAG through the Office of the President wrote to government agencies requesting them to join the Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System (GIFMIS) for the proper capturing of all procurement.
He said the letter encouraged the agencies that were not on the platform to take steps to get hooked up by the close of 2018 but as of now, some are still not on the platform.
“We are trying to ensure that the issues that we had after the 2017 election will be a thing of the past. We took steps to build a comprehensive data management system for government assets, but unfortunately the response has been very poor,” he said. “Once you are not on the platform and you make purchases it will not reflect and so we cannot build up our data base.”
He said an appeal was also sent to the Ministry of Finance to serve the OAG with copies of approvals granted to MDAs, RCCs, MMDAs to procure state assets and properties.
“Therefore, if we don’t get the information from GIFMIS, we can use that letter to update our records; sadly, the Ministry of Finance has also not bothered about it so we have not gotten any response as of now,” he stated.
The Administrator-General of Presidential Estate further indicated that a request was sent to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to also make quarterly returns on any new registration of government vehicles “but to date…nobody is minding my office.”
He expressed this concern at the opening of a day’s workshop for assigned officers of fixed assets at the various agencies under government machinery in Accra.
It was to equip asset managers of the institutions with the requisite knowledge on how to produce a credible database which the OAG can rely on for the compilation of a comprehensive database for the country.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri & Nadia Nimako