The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has directed the Ministry of Health to pursue and recover a sum of GH¢3,090,831.04 from individuals and institutions that were granted vehicles on hire-purchase but defaulted in the repayment.
The Chairman admitted some of the monies might have to be written off eventually, especially with respect to vehicles given to institutions but stressed all attempts should be made to have the individual defaulters pay back.
Hon. James Klutse Avedzi gave the directive on Wednesday, January 18 when the Ministry of Health and its agencies took their turn at the committee’s public hearing.
The 2020 Report of the Auditor General indicated 202 agencies, institutions, units, and staff have defaulted in the repayment of a vehicle hire-purchase scheme to the tune of GH¢3.1 million over a period of 6 to 76 months as of 31 December 2019.
It recommended the Chief Director at the Ministry pursue the recovery of the loans from the defaulters at source through the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) as spelled out in the Vehicle Hire Purchase Scheme Operational Policy and Guidelines.
Minister of Health Dr. Kwaku Agyeman Manu, however, explained the repayment was not structured well and explained that some of the individuals are now on retirement and living only on their pensions while others have passed on.
According to him, it is a huge challenge because recovery attempts will only pit the Ministry against some elderly specialists and doctors without salary and living on their retirements.
“The vehicles are old and when you ask some of them to come and make repayments, clearly they cannot pay with their pension money. So it’s also a challenge,” he said.
The situation, he said, is not different with the defaulting institutions either because they would also have to use their meager internally generated funds to repay the loan, which could affect service delivery hence the only option would be to write the loans off.
Hon. James Avedzi agreed but demanded more information in terms of the breakdown of the institutions and the amounts involved to enable the Committee to recommend how should be written off.
In the case of the individuals, the Chairman urged the Ministry to continue to pursue repayment of the loans by those still in active service but acknowledged the difficulty in the case of those deceased and those on retirement.
The Committee, he said, will look at the retired individual defaulters on a case-by-case basis for debt forgiveness in order not to send the wrong signal to people currently in service to take loans with the hope of being forgiven after they retired.