Government loses billions of cedis on ghost workers

The Government loses 300 billion cedis every month through the insertion of ghost names on worker's payrolls, Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance said in Sunyani on Tuesday.

The amount represented 10 percent of about three trillion cedis that the government expended on civil/public servants every month, he said.

The Finance Minister was addressing the eighth annual conference of District Chief Executives (DCEs), which was under the theme, ''strengthening the decentralisation process''.

The three-day conference, organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, aimed at achieving good governance for the realisation of objectives of government policies and programmes.

It was also to enable the District Chief Executives to brainstorm on their experiences and problems for effective local government administration.

Mr.Osafo-Maafo mentioned personal emolument, names of pensioners and the dead on the payrolls as some of the channels being clandestinely used to pay the faceless government workers.

The problem is particularly deep-rooted in the health, education and local government sectors, he said, stressing that the fight against the canker was a collective responsibility of all Ghanaians.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo called on Regional Ministers, DCEs, regional and district directors of education to help the government to arrest the situation.

The Finance Minister said the problem contradicted President Kufuor's call for zero tolerance for corruption. "If zero tolerance for corruption will be a reality, then ghost names must be eliminated from government payrolls''.

He noted that before the introduction of the district assembly common fund, Local Government authorities were raising their own revenue to finance projects and recurrent expenditure.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo, therefore, advised the DCEs not to wait for the common fund before they initiate projects, but should generate funds from local sources for such projects.