Auditor-General recommends independent technical and financial audit of VRA

Accra, July 17, GNA - The Auditor-General has recommended to government to appoint an independent team of technical and financial auditors to examine the financial and technical operations of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the enabling act as soon as possible. The Auditor-General made the recommendation in its final report on investigations into alleged irregularities against Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, Chief Executive of the VRA.
It said in the report made available to the GNA on Thursday that the period for the examination should be from 1993 to date. "This recommendation becomes even more compelling in view of the considerable public interest in the VRA affairs and the myriad of press statements and comments that are progressively getting sour."
The Auditor-General said the stance taken by the Senior Staff Association and the Local Union of the Public Services Workers Union of the TUC posed "real and present danger to industrial harmony". The Auditor-General's investigations covered six areas: - Unauthorised drawing of salary and allowances by the Chief Executive - Unauthorised allowances and other expenses paid to the members of the Board of Directors.
- Impropriety in the award of contracts for the procurement of motor vehicles and electronic computers.
- Impropriety in the award of contracts for consultancy services. - Mismanagement of the Authority's resources leading to reduction in revenue and financial loss.
- Impropriety in the award of contract for the Strategic Reserve Power (SRP) project.
The Auditor-General said they investigated the allegations "thoroughly", examined "volumes of relevant documents" and visited Tema and Takoradi for vehicle verification.
"We conclude that all the allegations made against the Chief Executive and the Board by the leadership of the staff unions have not been proven and indeed are substantially false."
The Auditor-General said it found that the absence of clearly laid down policy and procedures to guide the Management of VRA, as envisaged by the Act, appears to place to much power in the hands of the Chief Executive.
"We found several technical and operational problems and financial irregularities which have become endemic in the operations of the Authority over the years."
These, it said, included difficulty in obtaining fuel that met the specifications of General Electric (GE) to run the plants and delays in completing key preparatory works.
Others are the introduction of increasing levels of thermal operations in the generation mix as a result of the growing demand on the system and successive years of poor hydrology and the current high prices of crude.
The rest are many years of low and inadequate tariffs because of the Authority's inability to recover full cost of its operations as a result of governmental controls and mounting interest on loans contracted by the Authority to finance its day-to-day operations.
The Auditor-General said in its conclusions that it found out that, internal financial controls seemed "to be very weak and this has led to several cases of financial abuse by members of staff".
Among them were the abuse of the use of Staff Provident Fund, which had the expressed purpose of assisting staff to prepare for their retirement; "inordinately high" overtime claims; misuse of VRA's vehicles and fuel and failure to retire accountable imprests for both domestic operations and foreign travels.
"Management is making attempts to rectify these technical and operational difficulties and financial irregularities. We request that the process should be accelerated as a matter of urgency.
"We, therefore, wish to conclude that we have not been able to establish any merit in the allegation that the deterioration in the Authority's finances is due to the mismanagement by the current Chief Executive."