New employees of regional hospital demand balance from back-pay

Ho, Jan. 13, GNA - More than 50 new employees of the Volta Regional Hospital, Ho, are demanding that their authorities cleared the air about balances due them, if any, after deductions from their back pays from August 2007 to April 2008.

They are also demanding that receipts be issued on what was deducted from their back-pays, which they were made to pay to the Hospital's Accountant since April 2008. Ghana News Agency investigations indicated that each of the new employees received between 1300 Ghana cedis and 3900 Ghana cedis depending on their grades.

Some of the workers the GNA spoke to said the balances they were expecting were to be less Social Security and other deductions, as well as salary advances paid to them by the hospital, while waiting for the processing of their salaries by the Accountant-General's Department. They explained that they realized from their pay slips covering the salary arrears that, the Accountant-General's Department had also made deductions which the Hospital had already made. Those who spoke to the GNA said because of the silence of the authorities over the issue, their colleagues in subsequent batches refuse to submit their back-pay, which they had cashed from the banks to the Hospital as directed.

When contacted authorities at the Hospital said they had to pay new employee from the Hospital's internally generated funds while their salaries were being processed by the Accountant-General's Department. The sources said such payments had to be refunded into the Hospital's coffers and that delay in issuing them with receipts arose because the Hospital's Accountant had been on course in Accra. They confirmed that social security deductions were also effected twice and that the hospital was trying to sort out the issue.