I had a scathing piece planned the moment I saw this piece of information but I had to relax and let myself simmer a little before I put myself in ‘contempt’ of the Presidency.
There is an alarming lack of circumspection on the part of government when it comes to financial prudence that really should put the fear of God into each and every one of us as Ghanaians.
Aside the skyrocketed public debt portfolio (with no visible results), judgement debt issues, scandals such as GYEEDA and SADA which sucked sums of money that I sometimes feel we don’t really appreciate the magnitude of; it turns out the office of the President itself has no interest in financial prudence despite the myriad of issues plaguing government and Ghanaians.
With the hardships Ghanaians have to endure, you would think those in the big office at the very least would ensure no waste of public resources occur there, at least until there are results to justify that kind of expenditure.
But no, the latest expenditure report presented to Parliament shows a massive overspending on the presidential budget of over 130% of the figure allocated for the calendar year 2014. And this occurred just between January and September this year. Which means since then they’ve had ample opportunity to add just a little more to the total figure.
The office was allocated Ghc 30,929,343, yet documents presented to Parliament show an expenditure of Ghc 75,917, 714.
And to be honest this is what made its ways into the books, I shudder to think of what might have happened off-book.