The Ghana Railway Company has been urged by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament to be very serious in retrieving a whopping amount of GH¢1.5 million stolen by a former cashier of the company, J.W. Myles, in 2006, possibly with interest.
Mr Myles was said to have stolen the money at the head office of the company as a result of weak administrative checks and balances. The company took the matter to the then Serious Fraud Office – now Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) – in 2008 to retrieve the money but the case is still pending.
Members of the committee, led by the vice chairman, Samuel Atta Akyea, at its public hearing yesterday, were not happy that Ghana Railway had not been able to get Mr Myles to pay back the money with interest while the company continues to cry for financial assistance.
The committee has therefore invited officials of EOCO to come and brief members on why it has taken so long for the case to be determined and what it is doing to get Mr Myles to refund the money.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for North Dayi and member of the committee, George Loh, said it was an indictment on people working in the ministry of transport for failing to retrieve that money.
The NDC MP therefore urged the minister of transport to liaise with the Attorney General’s Department and the ministry of the interior to see how they could collectively work to retrieve the money for the cash-strapped Ghana Railway Company.
The committee members also chastised officials of Ghana Railway, with all their financial problems, for giving out loans to employees as captured in the Auditor General’s report.
It was revealed that the company gave loans to some employees, some of who have failed to pay them back, with outstanding staff loan arrears standing at GH¢186,281.
The acting financial controller of the company, Paul Afful-Dadzie, responding to the need to give staff loans from the company’s scarce resources, said in order to motivate workers, the company had adopted a policy to give loans to them.
According to Mr Afful-Dadzie, loans are given to workers for education, medical and funerals purposes.
PAC will continue with its sitting today with officials of the Electoral Commission (EC) and the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) appearing.
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