The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has called for stiffer punishment for an officer at the Birth and Death registration office at Suhum in the Eastern Region.
The officer is reported to have overcharged over 500 birth certificate applicants in 2016.
[contextly_sidebar id=”HyCENR8ZSk3QJqFMIIuUtWBsJ6MrWRxq”]The Auditor General in his report directed the officer to refund a total of GH¢17,000 to all 575 clients he overcharged.
He charged the applicants GH¢50 instead of the approved GH¢20.
The officer has since paid back in full the amount into the Consolidated Fund.
However, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee believes the directive by the Auditor General is not punitive enough.
It is, therefore, demanding that the officer pays back the amount with interest since he kept the money for over a year.
The Committee has also directed the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to reimburse persons who were overcharged immediately.
The Committee also recommended that the Ministry should sanction the said officer, a request the Ministry says it will consider.
Meanwhile, the acting Registrar of the Birth and Death registry, Kingsley Asare Addo has said that this outfit has taken steps to digitize its operations to address various challenges that applicants face.
He said his outfit has received some funding from the government to undertake the process and was confident that when fully rolled out, the registry’s operations will cover the entire country.
“Once your information is captured even at the health center, it is fed into the system and the information is sent into a central database,” he said.
He said that attached to that module will be receipt printout option “so whatever you pay, the system will generate a receipt for you and that number will be quoted against your application.”
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By: Jonas Nyabor/citinewsroom.com/Ghana