Former Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo has condemned the setting up of what he calls “useless and wasteful” institutions whenever existing ones fail to perform their duties.
He says “it is not the number of institutions that we have, which will help us do the work.”
He made the comments whilst responding to the role of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) in helping the Office of the Auditor-General perform its responsibilities.
According to the former Auditor-General, it is prudent to critically analyse the role of existing organisations before setting up new ones, in order not to waste money to set up new institutions.
“I am of the opinion that if there was the need for bringing in any other institution, first look at the existing institutions and see; are they not capable of doing what is supposed to be done? What is the missing link?” he quizzed, during his appearance on Hot Issues, Sunday, March 17, 2024.
Likening the setting up of state institutions without any benefit to corruption, he analysed that state resources are wasted in both instances without any benefit to the nation, indicating the country would be better off changing the mandate of some agencies to align with contemporary trends rather than setting up new ones to waste resources.
“Corruption, just as wasteful expenditure, equally denies citizens the benefit of the public funds so if you are creating too many institutions which are not delivering, you are being wasteful. So, if you continue to create wasteful and fruitless expenditure, it’s as bad as corruption because at the end of the day, the public purse which is going to be used to serve the public interest, is not being used.
He explained that if he had the power, he would have merged the OSP and the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to save the nation some cost.
“Assuming today, in fact God forbid, I’ll never be a President of Ghana, so forget about it, if I were made the President, I’ll still look at the possibility of combining EOCO and Office of the Special Prosecutor because EOCO is already established in all the regions and the districts so if you combine them, it saves the nation a lot of money.
If you look at the amount of money which is being used to set up just the OSP, if we need to roll it up throughout the country, how much do you think is going to be used for that? It is going to be a lot of money. So, at the end of the day, there is going to be useless and wasteful expenditure,” the Board member of the Global Fund told host, Keminni Amanor.
