The Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency Dr. E.O. Osae inaugurated the Audit Committee of the Ghana Armed Forces on the 31st August, 2023 at the conference room of the Command Mess in Burma Camp.
The inauguration was opened by the Defence Financial Controller, Brigadier General Amissah. In his address, he expressed his profound gratitude to all for coming. He spoke on the purpose of the meeting and addressed issues relating to the PFM Act and noted that the Ghana Armed Forces so far have been compliant with the dictates of the Law. He acknowledged the support of the outgoing committee and the impact their work has brought to the Service and the Military High Command.
Dr. Osae addressing the programme, welcomed the new members and thanked the outgoing committee for the enormous support to the Ghana Armed Forces in putting in place good financial systems.
He said the Audit Committee is a statutory committee created under the Public Financial Management Act to support all public intuitions to be able to put in place good financial control systems to enable them support government deliver on its mandate. Dr. Osae noted that, the Audit Committee has three main roles and do not take over the management of the institution. He enumerated the roles as Mandatory, Advisory and Supporting.
Under the Mandatory role the Committee is required to work with the leadership of the Ghana Armed Forces to implement recommendation on External Audit Reports, Internal Audit Reports, directives from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament and recommendations from monitoring repots of the Service. The Committee he added as part of its mandatory role is required to submit an Annual Report on its activities to the Office of the President, Parliament, the Auditor-General and the Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency.
He advised the Committee to be circumspect in the contents of its report due to the peculiarities and the uniqueness of the Ghana Armed Forces as anything put out becomes public information due the Right to Information Bill.
On the Advisory role, the Director-General encouraged members to look at the operations of the system, understand its peculiarities and support them to implement good Financial Management Systems including Risk Management and help them align it in their operations. Speaking on the supporting role, Dr. Osae said the Committee is to support the Internal Audit Unit to support the Military High Command deliver on their mandate.
Dr. Osae in his closing remarks noted that due to the uniqueness of the operations and functions of the Service, there is the need to act first to save lives and the country and a thin line between violating the PFM Act and saving lives. He said the role of the committee is to help them navigate along this thin line and help perfect the wrong. He shared on ongoing initiative and reforms in the public sector to help them properly deliver on their mandate. Dr. Osae informed the meeting of the newly launched Emergency Expenditure Management Guidelines for Public Institutions and the Audit Recommendations Implementations and Follow-up Instructions, the adoption of the IPPF and the automation of the Internal Auditing System.
Members of the Committee are Mr. Ransford Adjei (Chairman and IAA Rep), Mr. Nathan K.E. Yankey (IAA Rep), Dr. Mrs. Regina Mensah Onumah (ICAG Rep). Col. Willam K. Abotsi and Captain Ishmael Tettey Djagmah are representatives of the Ghana Armed Forces. Mr. Haruna Salam is the secretary to the committee.
