The Vice president, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has launched the Government of Ghana Staff and Travel card, dubbed e-travel card to promote transparency and accountability of local and foreign public official travels.
“The e-travel card is designed to facilitate the cashless disbursement of travel allowance and other payments for locals and foreign trips by government and all other public officials”. Dr. Bawumia
The e-travel card according to the vice president will replace all manual systems of managing imprests in the public service in a bid to promote transparency and accountability and make it easy for the cashless disbursement of travel and other related funds by government and all other public officials.
“The e-travel card systems automate and integrates all the processes from the point of initiation of card issuance request, funding request of MMDA’s and entities through approvals, disbursements and disbursement to cards”.
Adding that “it will further provide expenditure tracking and retirement of accountable imprests”.
Launching the card, Dr. Bawumia observed that the manual system currently in place provided an avenue for some public officials to engage in overspending and fraudulent activities with impunity when they embarked on official travels.
“This will deliver several attendants benefits including the elimination of the risk with cash transaction for efficient travels and cash disbursement, provide transparency and ease of accountability, ensure timely retirement of accountable imprests, strengthen, monitoring and controls of budgetary allocations for official travels to avoid overspending and eliminate the misapplication of funds, over expenditures and fraud associated with imprests”.
All government officials will receive a personalized card, which will enable their travel expenditures to be tracked and monitored as part of the implementation process.
“The e-travel card portal is to replace all manual systems of managing imprests in the public service by delivering personalized cards to every government office and employee”. He said
The vice president launched the card at the three-day annual conference of Controller and Accountant-General’s Department [CAGD] held in Cape Coast under the theme “The Role of CAGD in Advancing the Digitalization Agenda of Ghana”.
He said the e-travel card would, therefore, enable the CAGD to “strengthen monitoring and control of budgetary allocations for official travels to avoid overspending”.
The vice president observed that the world was increasingly tilting towards cashless economy and systems and urged the affected public to embrace the new platform.
“It is important that we move toward e-travel cards to make sure that we can engage in transactions freely when we travel”. Dr. Bawumia stressed
The vice president appealed to the public to do their maximum best to position the country in a better situation, adding that everyone had a crucial role to play.
“Let us maintain at all times, quality corporate attitudes, transparency, professionalism and patriotism in the discharge of our duties”. He added
The controller and Accountant General, Mr. Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem stated that the introduction of the e-travel card is in line with the mandate of CAGD to protect public funds as stated in provisions in the public financial management act (Act 921) and the regulations relating to imprest management.
