E-zwich has economic advantage – Mettle

The President of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Clifford Mettle, has added his voice to stakeholders calling on public servants to accept the E-zwich payment system proposed by the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD).

His comments come after public sector workers threatened to reject any payment of salaries through the E-zwich payment system, following an announcement by the CAGD that all public sector workers must register on the platform by end of May this year or forfeit their salaries.

But according to the twelve labour unions who have joined hands to fight the CAGD order, the E-zwich system cannot be relied on because of some technical problems associated with the use of the card.

“Knowing that most of the service centers for the E-zwich are dysfunctional and the desire to link with other ATM service centers have not received total endorsement by the financial institutions, the attempt at the imposition of the E-zwich is untimely and without regard to the tenets of policy implementation”, Mr. Isaac Bampoe Addo, Chairman of the forum, which consists of twelve labour unions told journalists at a press briefing.

However, Mr. Mettle, opines that the economic advantage the country stands to gain far outweighs any deficiency in the use of the system, hence, public sector workers must embrace it faithfully.

“My problem is the reasons people are giving for rejecting the system. If there are challenges with using the system, let us address those rather than reject the whole system. Because if this system can be used to even clear “ghost names” from the payroll, then it is something that we need to embrace. It is something we should not just look at the challenges and then say it should go away,” Mr. Mettle told the B&FT in an interview.

He further stated that the world has transitioned from the traditional way of doing things into a fast-paced technological world which offers a lot of opportunities for countries embracing it, so Ghana should keep up with such pace in order to realize the economic advantages that comes along with it.

“The world is heading towards what we call a digital space where people are utilizing technology to get things done. So if you have a product that is going to reduce your cash holdings and that is going to help drive you towards what we call a cash-lite society, where you have the opportunity to do things in the digital space, then it is something we should embrace as a people,” he said.

Another good thing about the E-zwich is that if you lose your card you don’t lose your money. So I think if the E-zwich is rejected by public servants, it will have a debilitating effect on the economy. We also know that public salaries form the largest part of government expenditure and therefore if we are able to move all of them to the E-zwich platform, it will save the economy a lot of money,” he maintained.

The E-zwich payment system has been praised by many after the National Service Scheme (NSS) reported that the implementation of the system helped flushed out over 35,000 non-existent personnel from its payroll, thereby, saving the economy over GHC146million in one-year period.