Private Legal Practitioner, Martin Kpebu has called out Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo over what he says is his failure to do due diligence before releasing a recent GETFund Audit report that has since sparked massive debate and heat.
An audit released by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) Scholarship scheme for the period 2012 to 2018, named some government appointees
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The performance audit report cited some personalities including lecturers, media practitioners and heads of institutions as having profited from the funds.
Many including some journalists, lecturers, and politicians, have since emerged to deny having benefitted from the funds as indicated by the report, demanding for a retraction of their names and threatening lawsuits in some cases, against Mr. Domelevo.
On the back of that, some critics believe Mr. Domelevo acted rather irresponsibly by just accepting the list provided by GETFund as final truth, without scrutinising the documents and verifying them against the bank statements provided.
Mr. Kpebu, speaking on Joynews’ Newsfile program Saturday joined the debate on that front. According to him, the list could easily have been misleading especially because not everyone who may have applied necessarily got the funds as requested.
A double check, therefore, with the individuals and the documents he believes, should have been the ideal and appropriate thing to have been done by the A.G, to ensure there were no lapses and that nobody was defamed in the process.
“The auditor is auditing the institution and the report is to the institution but once people’s reputation are at stake, it is only common sense that we can reach out, I hear they are about 2,000, so you pick up the phone and call.
You know we all love the Auditor General, but we will beg that moving forward, maybe they should scrutinise more. You see admission letters, you see awards for scholarship but you must verify whether they were really paid from the bank statements.
I understand bank statements were furnished to him so cross-check from the bank statements you were given whether Mr. X who was awarded this scholarship has really been paid, through the bank statements, that’s very critical you know.” he said.
“You know its public funds and you know that once the report has become, people are going to make comments and rightfully so. You see the way the whole nation is charged, so I think it beholds on him to double check,” he further added.
Martin Kpebu said Mr. Domelevo’s blunder is a huge dent on his work and hard-earned reputation because he is an authority with an established record of diligence in his fight against corruption.
“Bottom line is, once you put somebody’s name out there and it turns out to be false, it has greatly dented your work. Once people’s names are out, it beholds on the Auditor General to make sure that as much as possible, all those ones are verified. Now those few mistakes he has made, have really dented his work,” he concluded.
Martin Kpebu is a private legal practitioner
