Editorial

Parliament to deal with recalcitrant MDAs

Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) will be deprived of any financial allocation from budgets, if they fail to implement recommendations and directives from the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament with regards to financial malfeasance, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, Majority Leader has hinted. 

He said it would be a waste of public funds, if MDAs were allocated funds only to repeat the same mistakes they have been found culpable of by the Auditor-General’s report. 

The Majority Leader said this at a day’s forum organised by Ghana Chapter of African Parliamentarians Network Against Corruption (APNAC), to deliberate and map out strategies to fight corruption. 

APNAC is a non-partisan network of African parliamentarians whose members are united by their dedication to strengthen the institution of Parliament for the fight against corruption. 

The programme was sponsored by STAR Ghana Foundation and attended by parliamentarians, anti-graft public agencies, the media and civil society organisations. 

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said it was becoming frustrating for Parliament, especially PAC, for MDAs to continually appear before the committee without taking measures to rectify their mistakes captured by the Auditor-General’s report. 

He said in other developed jurisdiction such acts would not be countenanced, since it amounted to wasting colossal sums of money every year. 

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said in order to take such recalcitrant MDAs to task, there was the need for all the committees of Parliament to take their supervisory role seriously. 

He said the committees from the presentation of the budget on the floor of Parliament should begin to monitor budgetary allocation to ensure value for money. 

The Majority Leader said Parliament’s existence, apart from enacting laws, performed a key role under its supervisory functions, adding that under such circumstances, monitoring, evaluating and interrogating the budget in a non-partisan manner remained key to eliminating corruption and advancing economic development. 

He said the critique should be bereft of partisanship to ensure that, it was benchmark against the Social Development Goals (SDGs) goals, adding that the committees should be vehicles for enforcing and monitoring the use of budgetary allocation. 

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu reiterated the need for the budget to be subjected to critique and monitoring to ensure its implementation for development and social cohesion. 

He said combating corruption should be a collective responsibility of all the legislators to improve governance in the country.

BY LAWRENCE MARKWEI 

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