Three of the four panellists on MultiTV/Joy FM’s current affairs programme, Newsfile, were on Saturday united in their call to the Auditor-General, Daniel Domelevo, to compile a more thorough audit report on the performance of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) next time.

Economist, Prof Godfred Bokpin, legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu and New Patriotic Party (NPP) legislator, Alexandar Afenyo-Markin, all agree that alleged defects in the published report, especially regarding names erroneously cited as beneficiaries of the education fund, makes their call critical.

- Photo (L-R): Prof Bokpin, Alexandar Afenyo Markin and Martin Kpebu.

Following the recent publication of the performance audit on the administration of GETFund scholarships, at least two persons have contested the presence of their names in the list of beneficiaries.

One of the 86 persons listed in the report as a beneficiary, Hajia Ramana Shareef, has gone to court demanding that GETFund Secretariat explains how she is listed as a beneficiary when she did not receive any such support.

Another person, Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the current administration, Kennedy Osei Nyarko, has threatened to sue the Auditor-General for including his name in the list of persons said to have benefited from the fund.

These protests by the listed beneficiaries of the scholarship fund have further heightened the controversy about the audit report.

When the list was published, it contained the names of respected and high ranking government officials who many say did not fall into the “needy but brilliant” category of people who the fund is meant for.

On Newsfile today, Prof Bokpin first made the call for the audit report to be more thorough next time, noting that a good audit was critical to the future of GETFund because public perception about the fund was bad.

“Because of the significant role that the audit report plays in our governance today, it will be very, very important that perhaps the Auditor-General will be a bit more thorough and be a bit more careful in putting out a report.

“Whether we like it or not since he [Mr Domelevo] was appointed and the work he has done so far, there is some level of acceptance of his report in our governance space for which reason we recognise that Ghana has some future, to some extent,” he said.

Lawyer and rights activist, Martin Kpebu agrees with Prof Bokpin.

According to him, the few mistakes in the audit report has dented the entire work.

“He [Auditor-General] should have crossed checked some of the names mentioned,” he said.

NPP Member of Parliament for Efutu in the Central Region, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, commended Prof Bokpin for making the bold call to the Auditor-General.

But he also urged the Auditor-General to stop personalising criticisms about his work and objectively deal with the issues that are raised about his work.

The only panellist on the programme who believes the Auditor-General did a thorough job was Alhassan Suhuyini, opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP for Tamale North.

According to him, the Auditor-General only published the names of the beneficiaries provided him by the GETFund Secretariat and cannot be said to have failed at producing a comprehensive audit report.