Over 3,200 ghosts receive salary - Auditor-General

A total of 2,069 names have so far been deleted from the government payroll, Mr Edward Dua Agyeman, Acting Auditor-General said on Friday. Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have deleted 1,355 names as part of measures to rid government payrolls of "ghost names".

The Controller and Accountant-General further deleted an additional 714 names after the MDAs had submitted names from their various institutions. Mr Agyeman, who was addressing a press conference in Accra on the status of the special audit of government payrolls, said over 1.6 billion cedis had been recovered from an estimated 4.2 billion cedis that had been disbursed illegally.

The Department is currently working on another 1,200 names that were submitted at the end of April this year, the Auditor-General said. He said over 3,200 persons, who had left government service continued to receive their monthly salaries as well as their pensions over the years.

In November 2001, the government ordered the Auditor-General to carry out the audit of government payroll involving all Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) with the view to eliminating the names of unauthorised persons and unearned salaries, which had come to be known as "ghost names".

Also included in the audit were the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs). Mr Agyeman said investigations had also revealed that there were over 2,700 duplicated or multiple names on both active and pension payrolls.

"This is costing the government 2.8 billion cedis per month in salary and pensions," he said, adding that investigations were in progress to delete the unauthorised additional names. Mr Agyeman said the service intended to recommend that government introduced an identification system such as national ID numbers or a credible Social Security number, which could not be duplicated nor transferred to another user to replace the current computer, generated staff numbers.

"This would prevent the multiplicity of names on payroll," he said. Mr Agyeman said there was an evidence of over 7,100 names on the payroll that were over 60 years and were taking a monthly salary of over 3.6 billion cedis.

"We are requesting the affected MDAs to provide documentary proof attesting to the correct ages of the affected persons, failure of which their salaries would be blocked," he said. He said the Audit Services had requested the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to refund all monies that had illegally been paid into the various ghost names contribution.

Mr Agyeman said the exercise of deleting ghost names had been segmented into three phases of which phases one and two were almost completed with about

70 per cent work done. The next phase that would begin in the first week of June would cover all organisations on subvention and Ghana Government Pension Payroll.

He said at the beginning of the exercise a request was made to all MDAs and MMDAs to submit the returns of their separated staff, " but we have received only 30 per cent of expected responses." Mr Agyeman reminded organisations that were yet to submit the required data on their separated staff to do so not later than Friday 17 May 2002.

"After that date we shall be compelled to request the Controller and Accountant General to block the salary of the Chief Directors and the Chief Executives of the respective organisation." He said so far those who had been found to be involved in issues related to the ghost names had been handed over to the Police for further investigations.