PREPARING FOR PAC HEARINGS IN PUBLIC IN GHANA MR SAMUEL SALLAS-MENSAH, MP, GHANA
Opening Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearings to the public and the media, including broadcasters, had a positive impact on popular opinion about the effectiveness of Parliament and the PAC, as well as assisting the committee in achiev- ing its goals. It was an advance recommended by the Ghanaian delegations to the 2006 and 2007 La Trobe PAC Summer Schools. After careful preparation, the first public meeting of the PAC was held in October 2007. The decision did not alter the operations of the committee.
PREPARING FOR THE PUBLIC LIMELIGHT The PAC is not well funded, so external financing was obtained from the Canadian Parliamentary Centre and the United Kingdom Department for International Development to fund a four-day workshop to familiarize the Parliamentary Press Corps and other media with accounting and auditing practices and the work of the Auditor-General and the PAC. Meanwhile, questions raised by the Auditor-General about each ministry’s accounts were provided to the PAC. The Clerk for- warded the questions to the ministry and gave it two weeks to reply. A PAC steering committee assessed the replies and shortlisted issues for a public hearing. These must be approved by the full PAC before the hearing. The Auditor-General briefed the PAC in advance, and in camera, about the queries. Notices of ministerial appearances were sent to the media and made public.
POSITIVE PUBLIC OPINION The public hearings which began in October 2007 produced positive feedback from the public who were impressed by a par- liamentary committee being able to call Ministers to account. The PAC hearings were broadcast on state and private television and radio stations. However, the state broadcaster stopped its coverage on the first day after the morning session, saying they had only been booked for that time and it would cost many thousands to continue. Some Members suspected that the government put pressure on the state broadcaster to curb coverage of the hearings. Private broadcasters, however, continued their coverage. The Chairperson and other Members of the PAC received threats in apparent attempts to curb the inquiry.
Instances of suspected embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, failure to account for travel funds and payroll fraud were among the issues examined by the Auditor-General and the PAC.
MONEY RECOVERED AND CHARGES LAID
Of a total of Cedis 600 billion misappropriated in the 2004 and 2005 accounts, about half was refunded. Cases reported to the police by the Auditor-General had not been pursued as files had reportedly been misplaced in the Attorney-General’s office. The PAC’s public inquiry led to the files being found, the Attorney-General apologizing to the PAC, of which he was a Member, and a number of cases went into the courts.
Relationships”, was the third con- secutive annual seminar. It again brought together
Members who serve on PACs in nine African,Asian and Pacific Parliaments, their Clerks and repre- sentatives of the offices of their Auditors General for a week of dis- cussions at La Trobe’s Beechworth campus and visits to the Parliaments of Victoria, New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia and to the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly.This year’s meeting also included a separate seminar in Canberra for PAC Clerks on reporting functions and adminis- trative measures used to run the committees effectively. CPA-supported participants from
Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania joined colleagues from Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Timor-Leste.The World Bank Institute facilitated the participation of officials from the Parliament of Bangladesh which is preparing to resume parliamentary activities in 2009 after a gap of more than two years. The La Trobe programme again
included report-back sessions so each Parliament could report on what had happened to the action plan recommendations their col- leagues had agreed at the 2007 sem- inar.As happened the year before, representatives from each of the par- ticipating Parliaments were able to identify concrete improvements in
financial scrutiny as a result of the implementation of recommenda- tions from the previous year.
Bangladesh prepares to resume parliamentary governance The seminar was told that enhanced accountability of the executive to Parliament was being proposed in Bangladesh to augment the constitu- tional and political reforms being implemented by the caretaker Government. In preparation for the resumption of parliamentary govern- ment after the elections scheduled for the end of 2008, programmes were already under way to strengthen the effectiveness of the PAC. But parlia- mentary officials attending the La Trobe event added extra targets for