Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, says should the Auditor-General continue to refuse to surcharge and disallow as he is mandated to, the CSOs coalition will push for his dismissal from office and subsequent prosecution.

According to him, “it is a catastrophic failure if the Auditor-General does not perform that very crucial aspect of his work”.

“And we have sufficiently made the point that because of the Occupy Ghana case it is actually contempt of court if he doesn’t do that. And it is one of the things that we will later take on. We will take steps to cite him for contempt and we will push that.

“There will be other actions coming down the line if we don’t get the response that we’re looking for. And one of those will be a push or a move to have him removed from office and possibly prosecuted,” he said.

Speaking on PM Express, he explained that it is rather frustrating when citizens have to resort to dragging state officials to court to get them to perform duties they are handsomely paid to perform.

He noted that the Auditor General’s failure to exercise his power to surcharge and disallow is a conscious decision he has taken and in essence will not be able to defend same should he be quizzed on it.

According to Kofi Bentil, if the Auditor General cannot perform his duties as mandated by law, he should step down for someone else to take his place.

“Look, these people are taking good salary, they have good perks and they enjoy every facility of their office. We citizens have to get up and go to court to force you to do your simple job. And when it comes to doing your simple job, you refuse to do it.

“And like I just said, few things are very important than he recovering money that people have stolen, and I’m telling you this, it cannot be an omission. It is a decision; he has decided not to do it. If he didn’t know it, now he knows it because his predecessor did it,” he said.

He added, “If you say you’re afraid because Mr. Domelevo did it and because of that he lost his office, you don’t have any business sitting in that chair. So look, we’re sick and tired of having to deal with this thing cycle after cycle. I don’t know why people get into leadership positions and they lose their conscience.

“You have a country like Ghana, in Covid times, some countries were bailing out they were giving help to their citizens. In Ghana we pretend to give help to our citizens and then we steal the money. People steal the money. And then they end up taxing us for Covid. Take any receipt you’re given when you go and buy anything today and look at the number of taxes on it, half of it is being stolen.

“And you have an Auditor General sitting there, he has even identified some of those people, he knows where they are, they’re walking around free, and he refuses to deal with it. Meanwhile he’s sitting there and his job says you should do it and he doesn’t do it. We’ve gone to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has given a strict clear order that says surcharge, disallow, go and retrieve the money, he refuses to do it.”