$43,000 rot uncovered at Scholarship Secretariat

The Scholarship Secretariat wired an amount of $43,000 (Gh¢191,291) to the Ghana Mission in Conakry, Guinea in 2014 but the money never hit its destination, investigations have revealed.

The money was meant to pay for Government of Ghana sponsored students’ allowances between January and March 2014.

However, the 2015 Auditor General’s report, has revealed that “further verifications conducted showed that there was no Government sponsored student in Conakry to warrant the transfer of the amount.”

The report recommended that the issue must be investigated and the “amount retrieved to Government chest.”

It added: “We also recommended that the Scholarship Secretariat should exercise due diligence when remitting funds to Embassies overseas to ensure that funds transferred were appropriate and justified.”

In another development, the report uncovered that the five official vehicles of the Scholarship Secretariat were never insured or went through road worthy test in the year under review, quoting the schedule officer blaming the lapse to budgetary constraints.

“Failure to obtain insurance policies and roadworthy certificates for official vehicles exposes the Secretariat to the risk of bearing all cost and liabilities that may arise in case of accident.

“We urged management to secure insurance policies and also obtain roadworthy certificates for all official vehicles in accordance with the motor traffic regulations,” the report being scrutinized by the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament noted.