The Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee, Abena Osei-Asare, has urged Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to fully utilise the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).
Speaking to the media, she stressed that accurate records can prevent duplicated payments and other irregularities.
She noted that one of the major issues facing the country is that, the people responsible for feeding GIFMIS with the necessary information are not doing so, and said that if they did it properly the system would help block the huge leakages affecting the country’s finances.
“Here is a situation where we have the GIFMIS system that can help us to a large extent to keep some of these documentation and records but clearly we have seen that, the technical people the people who are responsible to feed the system with this information are not doing what is expected of them,” she stated.
Mrs Osei-Asare added that some ministers have confirmed that, in certain instances, huge sums of money running into billions of Ghana cedis, have been paid under ministries, yet the claims are resubmitted to demand payment again because there are no records to show the payments were already made.
She indicated that every Ministry, Department and Agency should transact on GIFMIS and ensure they input the correct data, and that the Minister for Finance must insist that every MDA uploads accurate records into the system in other to curb financial duplication and irregularities.
“We should be responsible for ensuring that every ministry, department and agency transact on the GIFMIS and then input the right data, you heard the gentleman from the ministry of environment telling us that for him the information that he was able to derive to speak to the Auditor-General’s report today was from the GIFMIS and is because they have been making consistent effort inputting the data,” she advised.
Source: Vanessa Elizabeth Nkum
