Ghost names saga: Let’s stop "raping" Ghana – Ras Mubarak

The Acting CEO of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Abdulai Muhammed Mubarak, says the continuous “rape” of Ghana’s kitty by people in public office–through ghost names–is to blame for the country’s resort to external partners like the Bretton Wood Institutions for money.

Commenting on the Ghc7.9-million rot uncovered at the National Service Secretariat, through non-existent and non-serving service personnel, Ras Mubarak, as he is popularly known, wrote on his Facebook page that: “Of the 600,000 public sector workers, I can bet over 100,000 are probably nonexistent”.

“We rape our country every day and expect it to become great?” he asked, saying the situation smacks of “indiscipline, corruption, selfishness and lack of patriotism”.

“Is this what we gave up military rule for?” he wondered.

In his view, Ghana would not need to be running to the Bretton Wood Institutions for financial assistance, as the country has recently done with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), if all ghost names are removed from the public payroll.

“We are going to the IMF for support. They are unlikely to give us more than $800m. Meanwhile, if all of us make the effort to expose this ghost-names business, we would be saving millions of dollars every year and there would never have been a need to look for money elsewhere,” he wrote.