Chairman of the Public Accounts committee of parliament, Kwaku Agyemang Manu is warning the mobile money mode adopted by the Gender and Social Protection Ministry to transfer monies to beneficiaries under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme may encounter accountability challenges. 

“The Ministry for Gender has started doing mobile transfers on LEAP and School feeding and when I heard this on the news I was asking what will auditors use to do their audit. So if we are not careful we will come into complex reconciliation issues,” he said.

The ministry has adopted the mobile money mode to distribute monies to beneficiaries as well as caterers under the school feeding programme.

The e-payment is to make disbursement of the LEAP grant easier, safer and faster for beneficiaries. 

Mobile telecommunications giant, MTN a well as E-zwich and Aya Technologies have been selected as service providers for the new facility.

Initially, Ghana Post distributed the monies to the households across the 99 districts in the 10 regions.

Matrons under the school feeding programme also receive their pay through mobile money transfer.

Kweku Agyemang-Manu said systems must be put in place to ensure that monies used for the programme are well accounted for.

But finance minister Seth Tekper assured the PAC Chair a tracking system adopted by government will ensure accountability and value for money in all cases.

“The Controller is working with the Ministry of Finance and has put in place a tracking system which will give us the capability to view all government accounts, without exception, from all banks in real time just as we are doing with the payroll,” Terkper said.