‘Ghost names’ on government payroll is the work of a syndicate – Kwame Nkrumah Tikese

The recently published Auditor General’s report on government of Ghana public accounts covering ministries, departments and other agencies (MDAs) for the year ended December 31, 2021 has generated public discourse.

The report among various findings discovered that the Ministry of Finance paid a total amount of GH¢1,112,896.00 as salaries to three persons whose records could not be found as employees of the ministry.

Described by many as ‘ghost names’, the issue of supposedly non-existing persons drawing salaries on government’s payroll has featured regularly in the auditor general’s report.

Contributing to the public discourse on the Wednesday, August 31, 2022, edition of his morning show, Kwame Nkrumah Tikese, host of Ade Akye Abia tagged the issue of ghost names as the handwork of a syndicate.

“Everybody who has worked as a finance officer even at the district level will agree that entering a ghost name into the payroll is not easy. It is a syndicate,” he said.

Kwame Nkrumah explained that the layers of checks and verifications in the government’s payroll structure makes it almost impossible for unknown persons to be enrolled without the assistance of multiple officials.

“If there is a ghost name, there is someone at the controller behind a computer who knows about it, there is someone at the district finance office who knows about it, there is also a person at the regional treasury who also knows about it. So when the money is paid, the people who insert such names go for it and share among themselves,” he said.

According to the Auditor General, the payment by the ministry of finance was contrary to Regulation 86 of the Public Financial Management Regulations, 2019 (L.I. 2378).

The names of the said individuals who received the payments were given by the Auditor General as; Allotey Eamon James, Kwakye Nana Yaw Asiedu and Adam Habibu.

The three were paid in total amounts of GH¢206,433.00, GH¢535,738.80 and GH¢370,724.16 as gross salaries for 12 months in the case of the person and 24 months in the case of the other two.

“We noted that, three persons were paid a total of GH¢1,112,895.96 as salaries for the period January 2020 to December 2021, but we could not trace their personal files and names on the nominal roll of the Ministry,” the report said.

As part of its report, the Auditor General recommended that, “the amount of GH¢1,112,895.96 should be recovered from the Chief Director and the payroll validators of MoF.”

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