Ivy Benson
4 October 2007
Accra — Newly Recruited Internal Auditors of government agencies have been challenged to act proactively through the use of prudent audit practices to achieve the required goals of the organisations they work with.
Mr. Edwin Barnes, Head of the Civil Service, threw the challenge when he opened a three-day training programme for newly recruited internal audit staff of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) yesterday in Accra.
According to the Chief Executive of the civil service, the new recruits should go beyond mere accounting practices and assist the institution in preventing fraud, abuse of the system as well as use the available resources to achieve the goals of the organisations.
He was of the view that internal auditors should be interested in the efficient use of the resources of the organisations, but not develop interest in whether the resources had been utilised. Mr. Barnes further insisted on the need of internal auditors to follow strictly the procedures and rules of operation to accomplish the objectives and aspirations of the organisations. The training programme organised by the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), which brought together over fifty participants from MDAs across the country, was to instill into participants modern internal auditing techniques and skills for the effective and efficient performance of their duties.
The training is expected to further provide participants with a detailed understanding of the Public Procurement Act, the Financial Administration Act and Regulations as well as the Internal Audit Agency Act.
At the end of the training session, participants are expected to develop individual short-term action plans up to the end of December this year for setting their functional Internal Audit Units in their MDAs and, in addition, draft an Annual Internal Audit Plan for the coming year.
The IAA, whose core aim is to establish skillful professionals in internal auditing to ensure the efficient utilisation of public resources, has trained 624 existing Internal Audit staff in 77 Ministries, Departments and Agencies and 7 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
In his welcome address, the Director-General of IAA, Mr. Patrick Nomo, noted that the training programme "marks the second stage of a process of integrating existing Internal Auditors with a new set, aimed at producing a new cadre of Internal Auditors that would deliver improved internal audit performance in MDAs and MMDAs."
According to him, public financial management must develop within "accepted public values, appropriate authorisation and adequate capabilities of public officers." The IAA boss further indicated that with all organisations striving to achieve value, the private sector targets profit-making, while the public sector organisations (PSO's) attempt delivering services aimed at enhancing the welfare and security of the society.
"Because these social services are delivered, using public funds, it is imperative for PSO's to uphold the values of transparency, accountability, discipline and performance orientation," Mr. Nomo emphasised. He told participants that the constitution and other laws of the country gave authority to public officers to undertake roles aimed at achieving public value, noting that in view of the authority granted by laws for public financial management, there was need to "constantly have a means of ensuring compliance while striving to deliver social services.
Dilating on the status of the Internal Audit Reforms, the Director-General of IAA indicated that currently, 72 MDAs and 7 MMDAs had their Internal Audit Units set up and were functioning, adding that this year, 293 new internal audit staff were recruited and posted to MDAs and 131 MMDAs.
"Our records as at June showed that 60 new internal auditors had resumed at MDAs while 109 had resumed in MMDAs," Mr. Nomo stressed, with the hope that by the end of the year, the number of MDAs and MMDAs with functional Internal Audit Units would augment from the current level of 25% to 50%.
According to Mr. Nomo, the challenges facing the various government agencies in the wake of setting up of Internal Audit Units would be surmounted if they were able to process salaries of newly recruited internal auditors as well as provide office spaces and other logistics for operation.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Ghanaian Chronicle. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
