Payroll ghost names: Dr Mawutor asks government to Investigate Controller and Accountant General staff

A Senior Lecturer of the University of Professional Studies (UPS) in Accra, Dr Kwaku Mensah-Mawutor has asked government to investigate staff of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department if its desires to see an end to ghost names on payrolls.

“…….Today, hon has presented a very good submission because it is the era of NPP, however the real syndicate are there. They should go and investigate the staff of controller and accountant general. They should investigateThey should go and investigate the staff of Controller and Accountant General. They should investigate”.

Ministry of Finance pays salary to non staff – Auditor General’s Report

He made the call when contributing to discussions on the 2021 Auditor General’s Report on Good Morning Africa on Pan African TV on Thursday, September 1, monitored by GhanaPlus.com.

The report published few days ago indicated millions of cedis was paid to retirees, dead persons or resigned staff by some of Ministries in 2021 alone.

“Payroll irregularities amounting to GH¢5,583,498.00 was recorded during the period reviewed. Included in the total payroll irregularities was unearned salaries totalling GH¢1,501,740.00 paid to 146 officers of 47 Institutions under
Ministry of Health,” the report said.

At the Ministry of Finance for instance the report said a total of GH¢1,112,896.00 was paid to non staffs of the institution for period of two years.

Personal files of the said non staff, three of them identified as Allotey Eamon James, Kwakye Nana Yaw Asiedu and Adam Habibu with staff ID numbers TAMF1902, TAMF1906 and TAMF0016 could not be trace on the payroll of the Ministry.

“We noted that, three persons were paid a total of GH¢1,112,895.96 as salaries for the period January 2020 to December 2021, but we could not trace their personal files and names on the nominal roll of the Ministry,” the Auditor General Report 2021 reads.

Find those who key in the ghost names – Dr Mawutor

Speaking about the development Dr Mawutor said finding out who keyed in those names and at what point it was done shouldn’t be a difficult task to achieve.

Dr Mawutor explained the payroll system works this way;

“The individual entities will key in the names, before they will be paid it must be validated by controller to the GIFMIS so if you want to track, if we want to do an audit trail, we will know who key in what and at what time we do not need any serious investigation to discover who did what”.

Dr Mawutor also advised persons found culpable must be sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to others.

 “And heads should have been rolling by now but you see the people who are suppose to apply the sanctions are always trying to play the politicking. Some of the offense it has nothing to do with politics oo is about individuals perpetrating fraud and they will be fighting NPP, NDC.

Source: GhanaPlus.com