Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni says the Audit Service has confirmed it audited GH¢299 million spent by the Ministry of Local Government on COVID-19 fumigation, even though the expenditure was omitted from its final report.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Tuesday, he said he wrote to the Audit Service to establish why the Ministry’s fumigation expenditure was missing from the Auditor-General’s report on COVID-19 spending.

He said the Audit Service provided him with an appendix listing the ministries covered by the audit, including the Ministry of Local Government.

“But beyond that, I specifically mentioned the Ministry of Local Government and also fumigation, and the Audit Service indeed told me that they audited everything, all the expenditure, whatever money they took and spent, they audited everything, including the fumigation.”

According to Mr Awuni, the Audit Service’s response was that the omission of the expenditure from the report did not mean the spending had not been audited.

“And their response to that question was that the fact that they did not include it didn’t mean that it was not audited.”

The admission has raised questions about why the expenditure was not reflected in the COVID-19 audit report, particularly because the Ministry of Local Government spent GH¢299 million on fumigation.

Mr Awuni said the Auditor-General’s report had put the total cost of fumigation at GH¢96 million.

“So if you audited this ministry, which spent 299 million Ghana cedis on fumigation, they gave you the figures, you say you audited, why didn’t you capture it?”

He said the omission was significant because one of the stated objectives of the audit was to provide a fair representation of COVID-19 revenues and expenditure.

“When you look at the audit objectives, one of them, and they actually repeated that in my letter, was to give a fair representation of what was taken and what was spent.”

Mr Awuni said the audit was therefore not solely about identifying wrongdoing.

“It wasn’t so much about only wrongdoing. They also wanted, Okay, we took this much as a nation for COVID-19, and this is how much we spent.”

He said the Audit Service’s explanation did not adequately address the omission of the Local Government Ministry’s spending.

“So if you have huge figures spent by whole ministries totally omitted, I don’t think this response was so satisfactory.”

Mr Awuni’s latest investigation into COVID-19 expenditure has focused on discrepancies between spending identified in government records and the figures in the Auditor-General’s COVID-19 audit report.

The Audit Service’s confirmation that the Local Government Ministry’s fumigation expenditure was audited but not included in the final report now forms a key part of the investigation.