Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has surcharged the Ministry of Works and Housing and the Ministry of Roads and Highways for failing to appear before it on Thursday, June 24.

James Avedzi said the two Ministries will bear the cost incurred by Parliament in organising the meeting, “the cost Parliament incurred for organising today’s sitting must be borne by them. The Parliament account section will compute the cost and they will be surcharged, including the media in terms of the time that GTV has also spent.”

He stated that despite numerous notices sent to them, the Roads and Highways Minister, Kwasi Amoako-Atta and the Works and Housing Minister, Francis Asenso-Boakye, failed to honour the invitation to assist with probe into the 2017 and 2018 Auditor General Reports.

According to Mr Avedzi, “we have written to the Ministries to appear before the Committee. We did not get feedback from them about their unavailability. Once we did not get any feedback to indicate the Ministries will not be available, the assumption is that they will appear before us.”

“This morning my clerks began to contact them and some of them were not picking the calls, some of them picked and said they were at another programme,” he told members of the Committee present at the meeting.

The Public Accounts Committee Chairman said the two Ministers, by their actions did not take the work of the Committee and Parliament, seriously.

Aside from the surcharge, the Ministries have been asked to appear before the Committee on Friday, June 25.

The PAC Chairman said that other Ministries have also been tasked to appear before the Committee.

These are; the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service, the Ministry of Communication and the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.