LACK OF ACCOUNTANTS HAMPERS AUDITING (PAGE 42, JULY 29, 2010)

THE Brong Ahafo Regional Director of the Ghana Audit Service, Mr Daniel Kwadwo Marnu, has expressed concern about lack of qualified and competent accountants in some organisations in the region.
The situation, he said, was affecting the preparation of credible financial statements on transactions made to enable officers of the service to conduct their mandated periodic auditing.
According to him, due to the incompetent status of some people working as accountants in some state institutions and organisations, writing accounting records was difficult for them and even when they strive to prepare their financial statements for auditing, the records tended not to be up to date for auditing.
Mr Marnu expressed the concern when he spoke to the Daily Graphic in Sunyani after he had led about 100 members of staff of the service, drawn from the 11 districts in the region, to undertake a two-hour clean-up exercise at the Sunyani Municipal Hospital.
The voluntary work formed part of activities marking the regional celebration of 100 years of the establishment of the Audit Service in the country.
The theme for the celebration was: “A century of public sector auditing: Defining new frontiers.”
The volunteers cleared choked gutters, weeded bushy surroundings and trimmed grasses and shady trees.
Mr Marnu said some of the district assemblies and pre-tertiary educational institutions in the region refused to prepare their accounts on a timely basis, a situation which hampered the service’s statutory period to submit its report to Parliament.
He further alleged that in cases when his outfit planned and prepared scheduled dates for auditing the books of some of the institutions, officers from his outfit would arrive only to be told by the officers in-charge that they were not ready while others would indicate that they were engaged in some activities, such as workshops and seminars.
Mr Marnu also observed that some traditional councils had no registrars and accountants to prepare financial statements to be audited, emphasising that some of the accounts offices at some of the councils had even been shut down.
He appealed to accountants to be up and doing by preparing their financial statements on time and making them available for auditing at the appropriate time as the Audit Service had its statutory period to submit its report to Parliament for scrutiny and action.
The Chairman of the Regional Planning Committee for the celebration, Mr Justice Bevary, said the decision to organise the clean-up activities at the Municipal Hospital was to assist the facility’s management in its environmental cleanliness programme.
He observed that with a clean environment, the recovery rate of patients would be accelerated, adding that no matter the level of medication, if the environment was dirty, the recovery rate of the sick would delay.