IT has been established that some individuals working at the Administrative Stool Lands in the Bono and Ahafo regions through illegal means have managed to spend state money without accounting for it.
The revelation is highlighted in the 2020 Auditor-General’s Report on the audit of statutory boards and corporations.
The report said during the review of the collections of stool lands revenue- at Nkrankwanta, one Amos K. Nsiah, a commission collector collected Ankobea Stool Lands revenue totaling GH¢3,420.00 but failed to account for the money.
The audit service then recommended to management to recover the amount of GH¢3,420.00 misappropriated by the collector, failure of which his bond guarantors should be made to refund the money.
In the Bono Region, the report said two revenue collectors namely; Nsiah Emmanuel and Krah Comfort failed to produce two GCR’s with no par value for audit.
According to the report, the incident occurred due to failure on the part of the revenue superintendents to effectively supervise the work of the revenue collectors which resulted in loss of revenue to the stool.
‘’We recommended to the district stool lands officer to retrieve the value books for our inspection or in default, compute the average value of their collection per GCR for the year and recover same from them’’ the report stated.
Also, ‘’We noted that between January 2017 and May 2020, two Revenue Collectors of stool lands office, Goaso collected total revenue of GH¢6,910.00 and paid GH¢2,880.00 to the bank, leaving a balance of GH¢4,030.00 not accounted for’’.
According to the Audit service, ‘’Details emerged two collectors; John Kingsford Dapaa managed to collect GHC4,920.00, but only paid 1,820.00 with Ghc 3,100.00 unaccounted into the accounts, while one Bismark Adu Amoako also collected an amount of Ghc 1,990.00 and only paid 1,060.00 with an amount of Ghc 930.00 unaccounted’’.
The Auditors an encounter with the Municipal Officer explained that the unaccounted revenue occurred as a result of a vacation of the post by John Kingsford Dapaa in March 2018 and the demised of Bismark Adu Amoako in April 2020.
‘’ We, therefore, recommended that the amount of GH¢4,030.00 should be recovered from the collectors or their next of kin, as the case may be’’.
Duayaw Nkwanta
At Duayaw Nkwanta, one Eric Acheampong, revenue collector of stool lands, failed to account for revenue collected amounting to GH¢3,770.00, due to the failure by the Municipal Administrator to effectively supervise the work of the revenue collector resulted in the unaccounted revenue.
‘’We recommended that the total amount of GH¢3,770.00 should be recovered from Eric A Acheampong. Failure of which, the Municipal Administrator, Grace Osei Nuako should account for it for her inaction.’’
*Outstanding Rent of GH¢184,000.00 At Kintampo*
The report further stated that ‘’We noted that one individual and four institutions owed the Kintampo Stool Lands GH¢184,000.00 as of December 2020 in respect of ground, farm and other rent revenue. This situation violates Regulation 46 of the Public Financial Management Regulations 2019, (LI2378)’’.
‘’We recommended to management to give the defaulters demand notices as a reminder, failure of which legal action is taken against them to recover the money involved’’ the report said.
Also at Atebubu,’’ we noted during review of records of Atebubu stool lands that, four filling stations, three Guesthouses, and one hospital owed an amount of GH¢48,000.00 in non-tax revenue for the 2019 and 2020 years of assessment’’.
The Audit service, however, recommended to management to issue demand notices to the defaulters as a reminder, failure of which legal action is taken against them.
BY Daniel Bampoe