7,000 ‘Ghost names’ deleted from govt payroll

The Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) has deleted 7,000 ‘ghost’ names from the government’s payroll this year.

The acting Controller and Accountant General, Mr Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem, said the names were removed after a team of auditors and accountants from the CAGD and the Auditor-General’s Department had toured the country to enumerate workers on government payroll.

At the launch of the monthly training for staff of the department in Accra yesterday, he said those who did not avail themselves to validate their names and details on the payroll during the exercise were taken out.

“Today, it will be very difficult to bring ghost names onto the payroll; besides, the department does not capture names onto the payroll as this is done at the ministries, departments and agencies’ level through the Public Services Commission before we get new entrants onto our system,” he said.

Dubbed the “Treasury Hour”, the event was meant to build the professional competence of the staff from across the country on the treasury functions to improve the delivery of financial management services to stakeholders.

Officials of the Bank of Ghana made a presentation on “The banking crisis: The role of the accountant”, outlining the causes and solutions to the crisis that plagued the sector recently.

Delays

Addressing concerns of delays in increase in salaries of public servants who received promotion, Mr Kwaning-Bosompem blamed the challenge on the department’s ceding of its human resource data processing functions to the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

He said anytime a worker was promoted, it was the responsibility of the MDAs concerned to make sure that every detail of the employee was captured on their system to allow the department pay the corresponding increase in salary.

“We only use whatever information of an employee we have received from the MDA, whether it is a promotion or a new entrant, to process the payroll,” he stated.

“As far as this information is not in our domain, we will not be able to pay you; so we are encouraging everybody that immediately you are promoted, please make sure that you conclude the process from your MDA so that we will capture the data on our system and pay you accordingly,” he said.

Rebranding

Mr Kwaning-Bosompem said the “Treasury Hour” was one of the many activities the department was embarking on to re-position and rebrand the department.

“To address the concerns of our stakeholders, we have upgraded the third party reference system; this is what has occasioned the request for government employees to upload their passport pictures onto the e-payslip system,” he said.