Member of parliament for kumbungu in the northern region, Hon ras Mubarak has stated that the Auditor general got it wrong in the misapplication of funds claim against him.
”There is absolutely no case of misapplication, occasionally the auditor general gets some things wrong and this is one those occasions”, he claimed.
The 2015 report of the Auditor General revealed how the National Youth Authority (NYA) under the leadership of Ras Mubarak misapplied GH¢215, 100.00.
The report said an amount of GH¢234, 900.00 was transferred to nine institutions and part of the balance of GH¢215, 100.00 disbursed as administrative cost to the Youth Leadership Institutions and regional secretariats and remaining GH¢56, 400.00 “kept and used by the Authority without accounting for it.”
The report added that “This contravened Regulations 179(1&2) of FAR, 2004 (LI 1802) which states among others that a head of department may not authorize payment to be made out of funds earmarked for specific activities for purposes other than those activities.”
But former chief executive of the NYA, Ras Mubarak explains that the auditor general erred in describing the situation as a case of misapplication because the funds were not earmarked for any specific activities
”To prove that one has misapplied funds, you first have to establish which instructions were given but in this case there was no specific instructions that the funds had to be given to the institutes as feeding grant”, he revealed.
According to him, to ask the authority to release the funds to the institutes to the neglect of the regional and district offices of the authority, defeats the purpose of the authority’s existence especially at a time when government had not released funds to the authority for 6 months.
”Every government institution was set up by law and I have always maintained that the Youth Authority has no business running schools, I have made my position public”, he fumed.
Ras Mubarak stated categorically that the alleged misapplied GH¢56, 400.00 has been fully accounted for with evidence, adding that the ministry of youth and sports will appear before the public accounts committee to give evidence of how the funds were spent.
Source: otecfmghana.com
