Some 7,000 ‘ghost’ names have been cleared from the government’s payroll this year, that is according to the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD)

The names were deleted after CAGD toured the country to count workers on government payroll.

The acting Controller and Accountant General, Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem, speaking at the launch of the monthly training for staff of the department in Accra on Tuesday, September 22, said personnel who failed to show up to validate their details were taken out.

“Today, it will be very difficult to bring ghost names onto the payroll; besides, the department does not capture names onto the payroll as this is done at the ministries, departments and agencies’ level through the Public Services Commission before we get new entrants onto our system,” he said.

Kwaning-Bosompem also blamed salary delays for public servants on the department’s ceding of its human resource data processing functions to the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

According to him, MDAs are supposed to make sure details of prompted staff are captured on their system to allow the department to pay the corresponding increase in salary.

“We only use whatever information of an employee we have received from the MDA, whether it is a promotion or a new entrant, to process the payroll,” he stated.

“As far as this information is not in our domain, we will not be able to pay you; so we are encouraging everybody that immediately you are promoted, please make sure that you conclude the process from your MDA so that we will capture the data on our system and pay you accordingly,” he said.