Public Funds: Ghana saves GH¢433m after deleting 26,589 "Ghosts" names on govt payroll

Government's biometric verification of public sector workers has seen ghost names shy away as government also saves over GH¢433m for detecting ghost names

The government of Ghana has conducted several payroll auditing to clean up the system.

Ghost names on the government payroll have over the period generated several arguments from various stakehlders.

Speaking to workers at the Independence Square in Accra May Day, President Akufo-Addo said “through a payroll audit conducted by the Ministry of Finance under the impressive leadership of Ken Ofori-Atta in the last two months, some twenty six thousand, five hundred and eighty nine (26,589) workers’ salaries have been suspended from the April 2017 payroll.”

 

Government's biometric verification of public sector workers saw a chunk of ghost names on the payroll not coming up to verify their names.

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"Ghost names on the government payroll, “have not come forward to be biometrically verified by SSNIT despite numerous calls by the Controller and Accountant General to do so.”

The idea of biometric verification is essentially to isolate ghost names on the payroll, he added.

According to the President, “The cost of maintaining these 26,589 names on government payroll is GH¢36,166,203 million per month,” meaning that government stands to save the country over GH¢433 million on this year’s budget alone by this exercise.

READ ALSO: 50,000 ghost names cleared from payroll, pension – Finance Minister

He has since announced a number of efforts aimed at cleaning the payroll, including new payment system that would integrate the GHIPSS payment platform for salaries to be paid directly to workers without any manual intervention, as has always been the case.

 

This, he said, would be implemented on a test basis this month and envisaged to cover all workers in June 2017.

Apart from that, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), has also been asked to create a separate database for the Controller by biometrically registering close to 200,000 CAP30 workers, with government payroll now having a direct interface with this and the existing database, thus reducing payroll fraud to the barest minimum.

Government's biometric verification of public sector workers has seen ghost names shy away as government also saves over GH¢433m for detecting ghost names Read Full Story