MMDCEs urged to assist gov’t weed out “ghost names”

Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) must continually exercise oversight responsibilities on employees to assist the government to weed out all “ghost names” from payrolls.

This would help control the wage bill and free up resources, which could be used to improve the delivery of important local services.

Mr. Seth Terkper, the Minister of Finance, gave the advice in a speech read on his behalf by the Upper West Regional Minister, Alhaji Amidu Sulemana, during the 2016-2018 Regional Budget Hearings launched in Wechiau in the Wa West District.

The Finance Minister noted that the Government was implementing a number of measures to restrict the growth of the Wage Bill, including decentralising the wage bill and aligning payrolls of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to their compensation budget in order to effectively monitor its implementation.

“It is for this reason that the Ministry sent a template to all MMDAs to collect employee compensation data that will feed into the 2016 Compensation Budget,” he said.

Mr. Terkper said it was important that as they looked for areas of improving revenue, MMDAs would have to step up their own revenue mobilisation schemes to generate additional resources to improve local level services and to reduce dependency on the Central Government.

“The huge potential in property rate collection remains untapped, especially for most of our Metropolitan Assemblies and some of the big towns in the Municipalities,” he pointed out.

“We constantly hear of so many property owners who are yet to pay any rates to the Assemblies, because the assemblies have not approached them to collect the rates,” he stated.

The Finance Minister stated that this must not be allowed to go on, explaining that as they open up the budget formulation process, it was necessary to discuss and find innovative ways to mobilise resources in an equitable and efficient manner.