Follow Up On Audit Reports – Anti-Corruption Coalition Appeals To Journalists

Madam Beauty Emefa Narteh, Executive Director GACC in a pose with some journalists as well as officials from the Audit Service and the 4th Estate Media Outfit at the Ejisu Conference

The Executive Secretary for the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), Madam Beauty Emefa Narteh has charged Ghanaian journalists to diligently follow up on audit reports which are centered on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of State as well as government so that they could get those institutions to do the right things.

Interacting with some media persons selected across the country at a day’s seminar at Ejisu last week, Madam Narteh said media men have the penchant to only highligh the release of the yearly audit reports from the Auditor-General and go back to sleep on same.

However, she said the media should consciously do follow ups on the specific institutions mentioned for engaging in illegalities, infractions and unlawful acts so as to get the institutions to apply themselves to carrying out remedial actions.

“We’ve realised that rather than doing diligent and painstaking follow ups and investigations on MDAs who are mentioned by the Auditor General, most media persons only do a one-off story on the infractions, irregularities and illegal acts of the named institutions”, Madam Narteh stated.

Training Programmes:

The Executive Secretary noted that the GACC with all its allied outfits have decided to carry out a training programme for journalists across the country so as to imbibe into them the spirit of investigation and follow ups.

Rather than highlight the audit reports and leave them to rot, the training programme, Madam Narteh explained is intended to encourage journalists to do a complete job of following up on MDAs as well as Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) sighted for carrying out infractions.

“We at GACC believe that when journalists decide to follow up on the recommendations given to offending outfits it would get them to do the right things and this would ultimately help to minimise the incidences of corruption if not utterly eliminate same”, the Director explained. 

Ghana Audit Service:

Mr Alhassan Fuseini, Deputy Director at the Ghana Audit Service tasked media persons to take particular interest in seeking for full details on audits done on particular institutions and agencies.

This, he noted would enable them to do a comprehensive work on the named institution by analysing the reports to establish a pattern or otherwise.

Mr Fuseini also said by focusing on previous and current audit reports of institutions, journalists could do better analysis or comparisons of same to establish whether things are getting better at those named institutions or not.

Right To Information Commission:

Taking his turn to interact with the journalists, Seth J Bokpe, Journalist with the Fourth Estate Media Outfit asked media persons to take advantage of the Right To Information law to seek for information from state or government outfits to aid their work.

He asked the media to always write to ask for the specific information they would need from MDAs as well as MMDAs.

“I urge all of us to always make it a point to request for every needful information we would want and use same to do better reports as well as analysis on topics we may be focusing our stories or articles on”, Mr Bokpe admonished.

Source: Ghana/otecfmghanan.com /Michael Ofosu-Afriyie, Kumasi.