The South Dayi MP has said there is a need to audit government’s expenditure during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Ghana.

Rockson Nelson Dafeamekpor believes there are some disparities in the report presented by government on its expenses on the country from March 2020.

"We need the audit the Covid expenditure, we need to audit the Covid-19 Trust Fund," he told Mamavi Owusu-Aboagye on Joy News' AM Show, Wednesday.

His comment comes on the back of an outdoor of a 67-paged document put together by the Community Development Alliance, citing that government had engaged in some procurement breaches.

It indicated that government had taken huge corruption risks since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

The report also accused government of engaging in irregular procurement practices that violate Ghana’s procurement laws, regulations, codes, and international conventions and best practices.

Speaking on JoyNews’ AM Show Wednesday, Rockson Defeamekpor said the government must be transparent and render account to Ghanaians.

According to him, such suspicion was a reason why the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has also said the Covid-19 Trust Fund must be audited.

“Monies have been donated, activities have been undertaken but we don’t know how, so we need to know how much came in and how much was expended, formally,” he said.

He, however, noted “luckily this report [the 67-paged document] has done some form of assessment,” but indicated, it did not formally gloss over the expected requirements.

“In waving those requirements [the statutory requirements] there are also some formalities that we follow, so the report didn’t simply gloss over those statutory requirements, it simply said that when you are awarding the contract, especially to those two entities, we breached the law. So it dope-stick clearly into the position of the NDC.”

According to Mr Defeamekpor “some of the agencies appeared before the trait committee… if you look at the expenditure line submitted during the budget estimate hearing, it leaves a lot to be desired.”

Although he is not a member of the trait committee, he said he knew about some of the issues on their table because is “a friend to the committee.”

He further cited that one of the reports stated clearly that the government gave food to 470,000 families, but begged to differ.

“Not even individuals, families. Families from where?” he quizzed.

“When at all material times the suggestion has been that they’ve given food to individuals, hot meals and dry foods, but in that report, that budgetary estimate, that was brought before the trait committee, we were told that almost 500,000 families have been sorted out,” he added.

The South Dayi MP also observed that other aspect of the report indicated government spent about ¢12 million on hot meals for instance, “but the report is saying categorically that we expend in excess of ¢42 million and that is a jump of about 13 million”.

He stated that accumulating to the fact that Ghanaians are deprived of transparency with the expenditure, “we are not also getting true accountability of how the funds were expended.”

“So these are the basis upon which we are asking for an audit and this report is a great spyglass view to what happened to the Covid Fund,” he said.

The MP noted that although the country is yet to defeat the virus, there is no news on the government seeking funds elsewhere.

“Interestingly covid is still with us and the government is still not going for money. We’ve just been slapped with about five new taxes to take care of some aspects of covid expenditure so the expenditure so far, over the past one year has to be critically looked into,” he stressed.