Justin Kodua Frimpong
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Justin Kodua Frimpong, has directed that henceforth all financial transactions of the Agency shall be processed through the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) in line with the Public Financial Management Law (Act 921, 2016).
He further cautioned that any staff of the Agency, who would process any financial transaction without passing it through the GIFMIS platform, would be appropriately sanctioned.
Mr Frimpong made this known when he addressed officers of the Agency at a three-day training workshop organised by YEA in conjunction with the GIFMIS Office of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) for some key officers of the YEA in Accra.
The training is aimed at educating the officers on how to process transactions on the GIFMIS platform and make payments using the same system.
The CEO said he was aware that globally, GIFMIS had been accepted as a major tool for fighting against corruption and abuse of office.
He pointed out that YEA, under the GIFMIS system, would not be able to exceed its budgetary allocation, as the system would not allow for budget overrun.
The CEO explained further that payments on the platform would also leave an audit trail for future verification and therefore financial malfeasance on the platform would easily be detected by auditors.
Finance Director of YEA, Rev Solomon Otoo, who threw more light on the use of the GIFMIS, said that the platform provides for segregation of duties and functions of officers, which acts as a check on financial malpractices.
He said that the use of the GIFMIS was not an option but rather mandatory on the part of MDAs as clearly stipulated by the law on Public Financial Management.
He explained further that Section 98 (b) of the PFM provides for punishment of not less than six months imprisonment if an officer issues a local purchasing order outside GIFMIS.
Resource persons from the GIFMIS Secretariat of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department facilitated the training.
It is expected that about 100 staff of YEA would be trained on the platform by the close of the year 2017.