Controller and Accountant General against huge demands on budget

Wa, Sept. 6, GNA - Mr. Christian Sottie, the Controller and Accountant General has remarked that it did not make economic sense for the government to meet the huge salary demands on the national budget by workers.

He said out of the government's projected expenditure of 7.1 billion Ghana cedis for the year, 4.9 billion Ghana cedis was coming from its revenue with salaries and wages of the public sector alone accounting for 60 per cent of the expenditure.

If government was, therefore to double the salaries of its workers no money would be left for other areas of the economy. "Investments, administration and other services which take 40 per cent of the budget will suffer if the government meets all the financial demands of workers under its payroll."

He said this at Wa on Wednesday during an interaction with workers within the public sector in the Upper West Region.

Mr Sottie was in Wa to public sector workers and explain issues agitating their minds with regard to salary administration to them. He allayed the fears of the workers about the frequent anomalies recorded in salaries, saying that a new set of software had been developed to address those problems.

The Controller and Accountant General answered questions on rent deductions, refund of overpayments and delays in paying newly engaged workers. He explained that if financial clearance was not obtained by a Ministry, Department or Agency before a worker was engaged, there was bound to be a delay. On problems associated with his department, he said they were catering for 367,000 and with such a massive workforce, problems would definitely arise especially when they had working tools that were bad.