Government has welcomed the Auditor-General’s decision to conduct an immediate audit into the use of public funds by the Commissioner for the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ).
The CHRAJ Commissioner, Lauretta Lamptey has been accused of spending about $180,000 on rent while the official residence which has been under renovation since 2011 was being done at a cost of GHC 182,000.
She is presently said to be lodging at a hotel with her two children since her tenancy expired in 2013 and has confirmed paying $456.25 daily.
[contextly_sidebar id=”P5d6TQz6B0YUUV94fslDDqwPdNw8Y3o8″]Her conduct has received widespread condemnation from various quarters, with some groups and individuals calling for her impeachment.
Government in a statement on Monday said it “expects the Auditor-General to complete its audit within the shortest possible time, cautioning heads of the various Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and heads of institutions that rely on public funds that they will be held accountable for any misapplication and inappropriate use of public funds, as well as any infringements of the Financial Administration Rules.
According to the Minister of Communications, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, who signed the statement, “under public service regulations, all state officials who are entitled to official accommodation but are not allocated same may only collect twenty percent (20%) of their salary in lieu of rent unless otherwise expressly stated in their conditions of service.”
Dr. Omane Boamah said: “We must also be mindful of the fact that the Commission and other such bodies are funded by tax revenue, and allegations of misuse of such funds must be looked into”.
‘I was willing to sleep in an uncompleted building’
Lauretta Lamptey disclosed in an interview with Citi News that that she was willing to live in her uncompleted official residence to save the Commission from spending a whopping sum on a rented apartment.
She explained that she was forced to rent an apartment at the AU Village in Accra at a cost of $180,000.
This was because renovation on her official residence had already began since it was unsafe to live in the building.
“We were looking for a furnished house because we did not have furniture and the lump sum required to furnish a house was not an amount we would have had available and all the unfurnished houses was for a minimum of two years, so in order to save money, we took a much shorter lease of six months and then we realized it would take much longer so we took a one-year lease at GHC 450,000,” she said.
She explained that she does not own a personal property in Accra and prior to her appointment in 2011, “I was living with my mother, I don’t have a house in Ghana, I don’t own a house anywhere.”
Qualified or not?
The Executive Director for the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi has stated that Ms Lamptey “is not qualified to occupy the position, not by performance of the Commission under her tenure and certainly, not in comparison to her predecessors in the same position.”
He is therefore calling for an urgent review to be made to the processes through which heads of constitutional bodies such as CHRAJ are appointed saying, “I think we need to revisit the leadership of these institutions.”
He stressed that the review is needed because “the performance of this lady calls into question the Council of State at the time which consulted in the making of this appointment and what did they know that made the approve it.”
Prof Gyimah-Boadi bemoaned the growing trend where the filling of important state constitutional bodies “is increasingly becoming a unilateral decision by the Presidency. What background check was done?”
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By: Nana Boakye-Yiadom/citifmonline.com/Ghana