Two assemblies in the Upper East Region - Bolgatanga Municipal and Builsa District - have undergone auditing that exposed several irregularities in their financial management.
The irregularities include irregular review of bank reconciliation, internally generated funds not banked or recorded, impress not properly accounted for and the failure or wrongful deduction of withholding tax.
Others are subvention from central government not captured, poor filing system, undue delays at deleting names of retired workers from pay roll and the absence of Internal Audit Unit.
Mr. Felix Oppong-Yeboah, the Regional Auditor, said this in Bolgatanga at a Public Financial Management Workshop organized by the Audit Service in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning for district budget officers, accountants, finance administrators and heads of some departments in the region.
Mr. Oppong-Yeboah said the irregularities were unacceptable. "This issue is very irritating", he said.
He said unearthing the irregularities was important information and if it was promptly acted upon and the monetary value recovered, such funds could be used for important development projects.
Mr. Seth Botchway, Deputy Head Public Expenditure Monitoring Unit, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, asked all Municipal and District assemblies to submit their budgets and supplementary budgets for approval by assembly members before using them.
He said majority of the District and Municipal assemblies spent more funds than they had in their budgets and the extra expenditures were not approved by the assemblies.
Mr Botchway said a study done on some assemblies in the country revealed that little amounts of money could not be accounted for that he referred to as leakages that were intentionally ignored because they were small amounts.
He said such deductions done all over the country would mean a large amount of money that could have been used to benefit the nation.
The workshop was meant to sensitize the participants on good financial management and to provide an independent opinion from the various agencies whose units the reports identified as areas where the institutions had problems.