SOLE-COMMISSIONER EXPLAINS DELAY

Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw Apau at the commission's sitting yesterday 

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday January 13, 2013.

Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw Apau has been explaining the delay in getting more witnesses to testify at the Commission of Enquiry set up to investigate the payments of Judgement Debt (JD) by the state.

The ‘Commission of Enquiry into the payment of Judgement Debt and Akin’ under C.I. 79 to investigate the frivolous and dubious payments of huge monies to undeserving individuals and companies, was appointed by President John Dramani Mahama after public uproar over the huge payments.

Notable among them were payments made to CP (€94 million) and the never-ending case of GH¢51.2million parted to the self-styled National Democratic Candidate (NDC) financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, both of which many believed were dubious and frivolous.

Justice Apau of the Court of Appeal said at the resumption of the commission’s sitting, after a Christmas break, that the slow pace of the commission’s work is not deliberate.

He said that it was due to the fact that the commission needed to take evidence from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) before turning its attention to the public.

“We plead with the public to bear with us. Very soon we will be sitting for long hours. As for now, we are interested in collecting data from the MDAs, study the evidence, and go into specifics.”

He said so far all the MDA’s and other relevant bodies that the commission had invited had responded positively to the commission’s invitations.

“We are not rushing, although we are limited by time. We will take out time to carefully go through the evidence in order to present a good report.”

So far, the Auditor-General representing the Audit Service, Controller and Accountant General, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Solicitor General and Lands Commission, have all made appearance and presented some documents to aid the work of the commission.

However, all the agencies that have appeared have also asked the commission to give them more time to enable them to get more information to be tendered in evidence.

The lack of proper record keeping particularly by state agencies appeared to have hampered the work of the commission as most of the agencies have indicated that they were relying on Public Records Archives and Administrative Department (PRAAD) to furnish them with vital documents needed by the commission.

At the sitting yesterday, Yaw Adjei-Sefa, a Deputy Auditor-General in charge of Special Audit Performance tendered in evidence two special forensic audit reports requested by the commission which are already before Parliament.

They include the National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) Forensic Audit Report from 1997 to 2002 and the Ghana @ 50 Secretariat Forensic Audit Report.

Mr. Adjei-Sefa also tendered in evidence a batch of Audit Report on MDAs from 1993 to 2011 and another audit report on Public, Boards, Corporations and other Statutory Institutions from 1993 to 2011, which he said could contain some aspects of judgement debts.

He also made available to the commission the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) foreign exchange receipts and payments from 1993 to 2011.

Justice Apau told the Audit service that if there was the need to fall on them to process further forensic reports, the commission would not hesitate in doing so.

Later, Kwesi Bentsi-Enchil, Chief Valuer at the Land Valuation Board of the Lands Commission also appeared before the commission in place of the Executive Secretary of the commission.

He said they were still compiling land compensation documents paid by the government from 1993 to 2012 and needed more time to do so due to the volumes of documents under scrutiny.

He promised the commission that they were hoping to complete the search and make it available “anytime from the first week of February.”