Civil servants steal more than politicians – Ras Mubarak

Former Member of Parliament for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak, has revealed that civil servants mostly engage in financial crimes which often cause financial loss to the state.

According to him, this fact was more visible when he served on the Public Accounts Committee during his time in parliament.

He explained his point to Happy FM’s Don Prah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ show: “As someone who was on the committee in the last four years, I got extremely frustrated with things civil servants were getting away with. There are a lot of financial crimes, misappropriation and misapplication of funds all caused by civil servants”.

Explaining why civil servants are more culpable in financial crimes than politicians, Ras Mubarak exemplified: “At the ministry, the minister does not sign the cheque books. It is the Chief Director and the Chief Accountant who sign but the whole responsibility is placed on the minister and rightly so because the politician is the head and he is supposed to make sure that certain things are done but I can tell you that a lot of the malfeasance that is happening is at the blindside of the politicians”.

The state must go after people who can’t explain their wealth - Ras Mubarak He added that even with procurement breaches, the culprits are mostly civil servants because they assess the procurement process to determine what needs to be done.

Proposing a solution to this menace, the former MP said he agreed with the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament, Mr James Klutse Avedzi, who has called for more powers to be vested in the committee to enable it to sanction erring public officials.

James Klutse Avedzi said that would enable the PAC to deal with officials who lied before the committee, after taking the oath to ensure that public funds were duly accounted for.

According to him, at the moment, the committee could only make recommendations after interrogating officials over the handling of public funds.