The ‘ghosts’ on the government payroll have suffered another blow as efforts by The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) have saved Ghana millions of cedis.
In a painstaking joint investigation carried out in the Northern Region between November 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, the two public institutions traced a total of GH₵2,854,144.80 as representing unearned monthly salaries being paid to deceased persons, retired, vacated their posts, flagged as missing staff, or whose whereabouts are unknown.
In a report released on Monday, May 20, the OSP said the “blockade of the amount of Two Million Eight hundred and Fifty-Four Thousand One Hundred and Forty-Four cedis Eighty pesewas (GH₵2,854,144.80) and the removal from Government Payroll of the corresponding deceased, retired, post vacations, the missing, and those whose whereabouts are unknown has saved the Republic an amount of GH₵34,249,737.6) for the 2024 financial year, and future savings of that amount (in addition to future periodic upward pay adjustments) for every year that the unearned-salaries-amount would have remained undetected”.
The joint investigation and assessment of government payroll in the Northern Region by the OSP and CAGD covered educational institutions under the Ghana Education Service and the Tamale Teaching Hospital.
The ‘ghosts’ constitute about 20% of the sampled high-risk number of 1,265 persons on the payroll.
The OSP and CAGD observed that “an alarming number of unauthorized and inactive validators” manage the payroll system in the Northern Region.
It was observed that some schools had no management units to validate staff.
The persons affiliated with the schools were either being validated by their previous affiliated schools or were being offloaded to the nearest schools for validation.
“In one instance, it was discovered that XXXXXX DA Primary School in the Kumbungu District of Ghana Education Service did not exist at all. Yet, this non-existent contrived entity was represented as staffed, and the purported staff was being validated monthly and being paid salaries”.
After the investigation, “the Special Prosecutor promptly unfroze the blocked salaries of the verified regularly validated persons upon the timeous clearance by the joint team, and these persons have been restored on the payroll system”.
This follows several weeks of consultation and engagement between the two agencies on corruption risk assessment and investigation into suspected corruption and corruption-related offenses concerning the Government Payroll Administration.
The investigation is aimed at isolating and removing the names of non-existent, ineligible, and undeserving persons from the government payroll, recovering wrongful payments and unearned salaries, prosecuting persons suspected to be culpable for any offenses, and institutionalizing and implementing internal controls in respect of payroll processing and payment of salaries.
The process covers all employees on government payroll and their respective banks and other deposit-taking financial institutions.
The investigation and assessment is being carried out in two phases.
Phase I covers the Ghana Education Service and Ghana Health Service, and Phase II covers Ministries, Departments, all other Agencies, and Metropolitan/Municipal/District Assemblies (MDAs/MMDAs).
Meanwhile, the OSP said it was taking steps to recover unearned salaries paid concerning deceased, untraceable, retired persons, and persons who have vacated their posts.
Additionally, the two institutions are engaged in directing internal control mechanisms concerning payroll processing to substantially reduce the incidence of the processing and payment of unearned salaries.
The exercise is expected to be extended to all other regions.