[ 2015-01-27 ]

Cabinet probes Controller over payroll scandal
Following the expose of the fraudulent activities
going on the Government of Ghana payroll, Cabinet
has finally set up a sub committee to look into
the allegations and come out with solutions that
would set the heart of Ghanaians at ease.

Mr. Seth Terkper, the Finance Minister, who
announced this at some of the radio stations in
Accra over the weekend would, however, not accept
any blame over the failure of the Controller and
Accountant General Department (CAGD) to implement
his predecessor, Dr. Kwabena Dufuor’s letter.

Dr. Dufuor, whilst in office as Finance Minister,
wrote a letter to the CAGD, ordering them to
migrate all workers on government payroll onto
‘Akatua’, a new software that had been
developed by SOFTtribe, a Ghanaian Information,
Communication Technology (ICT) company after
detecting the inaccuracies of figures being
churned out by the old software being used by the
CADG. Unfortunately, Dr. Dufuor’s orders were
not executed when he left office in January 2012.

Though the Controller and Accountant General
(CAG), Grace Adzroe had confirmed in a release
issued last week Friday that a Cabinet Committee
had been constituted, which is working with the
relevant institutions to address what she
described as ‘payroll challenges’, policy
Think Tank, Imani Ghana, says it is completely
against the pronouncement by both CAG and the
Finance Minister, Seth Terkper.

The founding president of the group, Mr. Franklin
Cudjoe, told The Chronicle in an interview over
the weekend that Cabinet had been around all these
years, yet it failed to deal with the issue of
ghost names on the government payroll and that he
did not trust them to come out with any new
measures that would deal with the problem once and
for all.

According to Imani, what Ghana needed at the
moment was a public forum where all Ghanaians
would have the opportunity to contribute on how to
eliminate the ghost names and make the government
payroll more credible.

The issue of ghost names has always been an
albatross hanging on the neck of successive
governments. Economic giants like Mr. Yaw Osafo
Maafo, the late Kwadwo Baah Wiredu, Dr. Anthony
Akoto Osei and Dr. Kwabena Dufuor have all done
their best to eliminate the canker but they failed
to achieve their aim.

The payroll fraud has also compelled the European
Union to withhold a staggering £135m out of the
£400m the Union allocated to Ghana.

According Sunday Times in a report it published in
December last year, Britain, which is the largest
individual donor to Ghana, has allocated £250m in
aid for the 2012-15 period. More than £9m has
been withheld this year (2014) following the
revelations about the ghost workers and Ghana’s
wider budgetary problems.

Conservative estimates show that about 1% of
Ghana’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP) is spent
on these fictitious names, popularly referred to
as ghost names.

Already, a little over 600,000 workers on the
government payroll are consuming GHc9 billion of
the revenue generated by the state.

The figure was expected to increase to GHc11
billion in December last year up from
GHc1.7billion, that was been spent on these same
workers before the introduction of the Single
Spine Salary pay policy.

There are, however, a strong believe that some of
these workers are not actually working for the
government and that some unscrupulous people have
fraudulently inserted their names on the payroll,
collected the money at the end of each month and
pocketed them.

A senior IMF official in Ghana, who spoke to the
Sunday Times said: “Is there a massive fraud
involving foreign aid fund? We will not know the
extent of it until a thorough reform has taken
place, but it is apparent that the huge increase
in the public payroll is the main reason for the
growing deficit.”

A senior EU source said the abuse of European
funds in Ghana was not as bad as the “grand
larceny” going on in some other African
countries that receive aid from both Brussels and
national capitals such as London.

“We have no hard evidence of the number of ghost
workers but the [state employees’] wage bill
makes up 70% of government spending and some
estimates put the [ghost workers’] figure at
20%,” the source told the Sunday Times.

So far no government of Ghana official has been
implicated in the fraudulent activities going on
the payroll as exposed by KPMG, an international
audit firm and being reported by both local and
the international media.

Industry players who spoke to The Chronicle,
however, argued that the fraud seems to be a
handiwork of a cabal operating at both the CAGD
and the various ministries and department.

Source - Ghanaian Chronicle

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