Removal of ghost-names on payroll 'slow' – Auditor General

The Auditor General, Daniel Yaw Domelovo, has reiterated his department’s commitment to clean the nation’s public sector payroll system of ghost names.

The Auditor General’s Department is currently on a nationwide exercise to ensure that undeserving persons found on the payroll are deleted, but according to the Auditor General, the process is quite slow.

According to him, between 10,000 and 12,000 persons are expected to leave the payroll each year as a result of death or retirement, however much less of the number is seen.

He added that his office is committed to also taking on people who were on the payroll fraudulently.

“What we are trying to do is to validate the payroll to ensure that people who are on the payroll are genuine workers. The attritions on payroll are very high. Each year there are between 10,000 to12,000 people who leave the payroll because they’ve gone on pension, resigned or died and the process of removing these names is very slow. So we are going through it to clean it and those who are on it fraudulently, we take them on,” he said.

In a just ended exercise in the central Region, it was found that some persons had used fake certificates to apply and were employed.

It was also revealed that many civil servants had been receiving salaries based on fake promotions.

As part of efforts to address the problem, the department has given a 10-day window to all civil servants across the country to present their documents and evidence of their employment.

Those unable to produce the evidence may face prosecution.

Mr. Domelovo in an earlier Citi News interview said, “Auditing is about evidence, so produce the evidence; but please don’t come to me and say trust us or trust me, I have taught for so many years.”

“There is no way you can say you are a teacher and have no appointment letter or say I am working in a hospital but have no appointment letter. Even if you are genuinely on the payroll, we want to know whether the position you are on the payroll is correct,” he warned.

By: Jonas Nyabor/citinewsroom.com/Ghana

Source: citifmonline.com