YEA suspends allowances of beneficiaries over discrepancies
The management of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) has suspended payment of allowances to beneficiaries due to some discrepancies and fraudulent activities in their payroll.
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A statement signed and issued by the acting deputy chief executive of the YEA in charge of operations, Mr Bashiru Ibrahim explained that the decision was taken after preliminary investigations detected the anomalies.
He said the suspension will save the agency “and the Ghanaian taxpayer Gh¢1,067,700 per month.”
He further noted that, based on the findings, management of YEA has commissioned the Internal Audit Agency to conduct a special audit into the operations of the Agency.
“This has become necessary in order to provide a platform for the new administration to take measures to prevent the scandals that rocked the Agency in the past. By this communication, management appeals to beneficiaries to remain calm as we work to complete the validation process. We apologize for the inconvenience caused,” he added.
According to Mr Awal Mohammed, Public Relations Officer of the YEA, it has also been detected that a total of 2,999 beneficiaries from the district and regional offices for instance have not been at post for several months but were drawing allowances.
He said the discrepancies were detected in January 2017 while the month's payments were being prepared following the assumption of office of the new CEO, Mr Justin Koduah Frimpong.
He said it was detected that about 280 beneficiaries were drawling double allowances with their e-zwich cards under different names.
"These are basically the discrepancies that we've seen and we think that these are irregularities that should make us suspend allowances because if you put the amount together it's over a Gh¢1 million, which is huge. So if you continue to pay the allowances, February, March, then you are going to pay around Gh¢2 million which would be wasted," Mr Awal said.
He said since that was only the preliminary investigations at the headquarters, the internal audit has been tasked to do a full audit and they were currently in the Northern region.
He said they should finish their work by end of April so that in May they could go ahead and pay the allowances.
