The chairperson of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Abena Osei-Asare, has accused the parliamentary Majority of disrupting a critical audit hearing into GH¢68 billion in government arrears after Majority members were recalled from the sitting to help form quorum in the chamber, only to find that no proceedings had commenced upon their arrival.
The sitting, which had been rescheduled from March 24 to allow proceedings to take place, was examining the Auditor-General’s report on government payables and commitments as of December 2024. It was proceeding normally when, at around 11:15am, Majority Chief Whip Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor directed his members to leave the committee and return to the chamber to help constitute a quorum.
Mrs Osei-Asare told Parliament that the session had started as scheduled, with invited stakeholders from ministries, departments and agencies already present when it was interrupted. “Without their members, we cannot proceed, so we had to halt the sitting and ask invitees to return another time,” she said, warning that the delay could affect the timeline given for the probe.
Her frustration sharpened when she discovered the circumstances of the recall. Speaking on the JoyNews programme The Pulse the same day, she said committee members were told to suspend their work on the grounds of urgent government business on the floor of Parliament, only to find upon arrival that no such proceedings had begun. She described the conduct as an erosion of trust and an abuse of the Majority’s numerical advantage.
Mrs Osei-Asare argued that whatever parliamentary business was pending in the chamber did not justify pulling members away from officials who had appeared specifically to respond to audit queries involving tens of billions of cedis, describing the prioritisation as misplaced given the magnitude of the financial review underway.
The Majority pushed back. Chief Whip Dafeamekpor denied any intention to undermine the committee’s work, saying the decision was driven by scheduling pressures and not obstruction. “The impression that we are not interested in the committee’s work is not accurate,” he said. He added that a decision had already been taken internally that committee activities would be suspended until Friday.
The PAC is currently investigating approximately GH¢68 billion in arrears, as well as accounts maintained by the Accountant General and a forensic audit commissioned by the government. Mrs Osei-Asare has sought guidance from the Speaker of Parliament on how to prevent committee sittings from being disrupted by competing quorum demands in future.
The incident adds institutional tension to a probe that has already drawn political controversy. Earlier this month, a PAC member confirmed that Mrs Osei-Asare would recuse herself from committee proceedings relating to the previous administration, given her former role as Deputy Minister of Finance, in line with standard parliamentary procedure to ensure impartiality.
