Ghana’s Auditor General reveals violations in use of Covid 19 funds

After Senegal, Ghana is the latest African country to have its authorities called out for misappropriating or mismanaging funds spent fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Ghana Audit Service report on government covid-19 spending for the period March 2020 to June 2022 has been widely commented on social media.

In all, 21,844,189,185.24 GH¢ (over US$1 billion) has been mobilized to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana.

The 119-page report highlights irregularities in the management of some tranches of the fund.

Among them are unapproved risk allowance payments at the Ministry of Information. The ministry’s “senior management and other support staff” reportedly paid her a total of 151,500 cents in COVID-19 risk allowances for coming to work during the lockdown. “

It was done “against the direction of the President and without the approval of the General Staff.”

In fact, only frontline health workers will receive a monthly extra allowance of 50% of their base salary in March, April, May and June.

not receive vaccine delivery

Authorities did not receive deliveries of some paid COVID-19 jabs, according to reports. Ghana’s Ministry of Health has paid UNICEF/AVAT $120,192,379.80 for the supply of the vaccine.

However, only “5,109,600.00 doses of vaccine worth US$38,322,000.00 have been supplied to the National Cold Room.”

The Director General of the Ministry of Health explained that this amount was paid in anticipation of receiving all vaccines in a short period of time for vaccination in the country.

He attributed the impossibility of receiving Janssen’s “paid vaccines” to “limited vaccine storage capacity, combined with the slowness of Ghanaians in Unexpected donations of vaccines were received domestically.”

This created a difference of more than US$81 billion.

Some Ghanaians took to Twitter to express their disappointment and tagged the report #NPPGrandCovidTheft.

Ghana Audit Service has conducted the audit in accordance with its statutory mandate and as requested by the Minister of Finance.

Many officials in sub-Saharan Africa are suspected of misappropriating or mismanaging funds dedicated to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, including in Cameroon, Guinea and South Africa.