The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has been urged to ensure that public servants who misappropriated public funds were sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to others.
Dr Albert Kan-Dapaah, a former PAC Chairman, said setting up of the Committee was a great achievement in the annals of history in the fight against corruption.
He lauded the Committee?s work, stating that ?we have been hearing a lot about wrong doings during its hearings but we don?t hear much about sanctions being applied to the offenders?.
Dr Kan-Dapaah, who is also the Consulting Director of the Centre for Public Accountability, University of Professional Studies, was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on the sideline of the opening ceremony of the Maiden Annual Summer School of the Centre.
He said the PAC was a very good development in Ghana since every public servant now knows that they would have to answer for their mishandling of public resources entrusted into their care.
He advised public office holders to abide by the laws governing the use of public resources placed in their care so that they would not have to be called to answer before the PAC.
?If you go by these laws, when you appear before the PAC, you will come out happy, but if you don?t, then you will have to fear the PAC,? he said.
?There is a lot of corruption in the country, but there are lots of efforts to stop it. Corruption did not just happen, it has been here for years, but there are efforts to fight it.?
Dr Kan-Dapaah said it was the right of the citizenry to demand accountability from public office holders.
GNA
