KNUST RUNS A HERD OF UNACCREDITED PROGRAMMES – A-G REPORT

According to the Auditor-General’s report for 2021, some academic programs provided by Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have not received accreditation.

The report, dated June 1, 2022, is sent to Mr. Alban Bagbin, Speaker of parliament.

According to details of the report, “out of the 360 programmes run by the university, only 61 have been accredited, 190 have been sent to the National Accreditation Board (NAB) for accreditation and reaccreditation with 109 yet to be sent to NAB for accreditation.”

The Auditor-General has, therefore “recommended to Management to cease running programmes that are not accredited or having its accredited certificates expired, until they are accredited or renewed, to avoid sanctions by NAB.”

Still, on KNUST, the Auditor-General discovered that four officers who were given sabbatical leave by the university accepted various appointments in other government organizations where they are receiving full monthly salaries (basic salary and other allowances) in addition to the basic and Market Premium being paid by the university (KNUST).

The report claims that as a result, the government has had to pay GH 488,868.69 in basic salary and market premium twice.

“We recommended to Management to ensure that the officers refund the salaries paid by the University for the sabbatical leave period to the consolidated fund,” the report indicated.

Details of other findings and recommendations made by the Auditor-General as regards the KNUST are as follows:

Development Office

“We identified a number of defects during our physical inspection of the Proposed Construction of Educational Resort Facilities for the Institute of Distance Learning (IDL) at Moree.

We recommended that the Director of works, and the project supervisors should rectify the defects identified at their own expense.”

Maintenance Unit

“Our audit disclosed that out of GH¢291,771.61 released by the University for maintenance activities, transactions in the sum of GH¢263,596.42 were without relevant supporting documents like Vice Chancellor’s approval and letters of contract engagements, signed sheets, and proper VAT invoices to authenticate the payments.

In the absence of the required supporting documents to prove the legitimacy of the expenditures, we recommended that the technical team at the Maintenance Department (Architect, Site Manager, Administrator, and others) should refund the amount of GH¢263,596.42 to the University.”

Procurement Department

“We noted that Messrs Red Mango Limited who won a contract for the supply of Automatic Turnstile Gate and accessories at the University presented Invalid Tax Clearance Certificate (TCC).

We recommended that the Tender Evaluation Panel should pay critical attention to Section 22 of Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) as amended by Section 7 of the Public Procurement (Amendment) Act, 2016 (Act 914) when evaluating tenders.”

Colleges and Departmental issues – University Printing Press

“We noted from our review of accounts receivables in the Financial Statements of the Printing Press that a total debt of GH¢294,123.00 owed by 14 customers remained uncollected since 2016.

We recommended to Management to institute debt collection strategy to ensure early recovery of the debt and minimise future default rate.”