Investigative journalist and Coordinator of the Pledge Against Corruption, Manasseh Azure Awuni, has backed calls for a forensic audit into Ghana’s COVID-19 expenditure, particularly the estimated GH¢780 million spent on fumigation during the pandemic.

According to him, the audit is necessary to establish the full scope of the expenditure and determine what may have gone wrong with the management of COVID-19 funds.

“I think I agree with some MPs, including Kofi Amankwa-Manu, and even James Klutse Avedzi, who was a past chairman of PAC, Parliament's Accounts Committee, that there should be a forensic audit to be able to establish the scope of expenditure and what may have gone wrong with the COVID-19 funds,” he said on JoyNews' Newsfile on Saturday.

Mr Awuni questioned why government agencies spent hundreds of millions of cedis on fumigation when existing contracts and capacity were reportedly already available to provide the service.

He said, based on his investigation, the expenditure covered the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Education, adding that the total could be higher if other ministries also undertook fumigation.

“The suspicion is in twofold. One, Ghana didn't have to spend a pesewa on that fumigation, because the scientists said it was not necessary, and if it was necessary, we already had enough contracts and capacity to have done it. No single pesewa should have been spent,” he said.

He also raised questions about the Audit Service’s handling of the expenditure, citing previous audits of the District Assemblies Common Fund in which fumigation contracts were reportedly flagged over concerns about payment for services that were not delivered.

Mr Awuni referenced a 2022 or 2023 position by James Klutse Avedzi, then acting on an Auditor-General’s report, that assemblies should cancel certain fumigation contracts because they were not receiving value for money.

He said the same scrutiny should have been applied during the COVID-19 audit.

“So if auditors go into this and then that service has been rendered and so much money was paid, I expected them to have questioned whether it was necessary and what had become of the existing contracts,” he said.

Mr Awuni said such questions were not adequately addressed, while significant expenditure by ministries on fumigation did not appear to have been captured in the Auditor-General’s special audit to the extent revealed by his investigation.

He further suggested that the GH¢780 million figure could increase as more expenditure is examined.

He said the proposed forensic audit should also help determine why government spent such significant amounts on fumigation despite existing contracts.

“So why did we have to spend all this money when we already had contracts that we paid for to do such services?” he questioned.

His comments follow an investigation which found a significant discrepancy between the amount recorded by the Auditor-General’s special audit as COVID-19 fumigation expenditure and documents indicating substantially higher spending.

The special audit recorded GH¢96 million as the cost of fumigation, while the investigation found evidence of at least GH¢720 million spent by three ministries on the exercise.

The discrepancy has raised questions about whether relevant expenditure information was withheld from auditors or whether the audit failed to accurately capture the full cost of the exercise.