Exercise to register pensioners underway

The Auditor-General's Department on Monday began an exercise to register pensioners on government payroll, but who do not belong to pensioners' associations as government continues with its war against "ghost names" that have led to the bloating of payrolls.

The exercise, which is expected to last for 14 days, would cover pensioners in the Greater Accra Region. At the registration centre at Kinbu Gardens, Mr. Francis Glover, an Assistant Director at the Auditor General's Department, told the Ghana News Agency that the response to the exercise had been very encouraging.

"As 1030 hours over 130 pensioners had registered with an equal number in the queue waiting for their turn," he said. The Assistant Director said there was a high sense of awareness among the pensioners, which had contributed to a successful beginning of the exercise.

Mr Glover told the pensioners, some of who complained that they should not be made to queue in the sun, since they did not insert "ghost names" on the payrolls, that their co-operation was necessary to clean the payrolls.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo has said the government loses about 300 billion cedis a year through "ghost names." Mr Glover noted that the exercise was less cumbersome when dealing with pensioners' associations and urged all pensioners to join such associations to facilitate future transactions.

"Information flow due to bureaucracy in the civil service could be partly blamed for some of the 'ghost names' since it takes time for information to get to decision taking level which some unscrupulous personnel may take advantage of," he said.

Mr Glover called for the structures for processing salary vouchers to be streamlined while organisations should also act on audit reports, which were periodically submitted to them. "Some of the inadequacies can be found in previous audit reports submitted to managements and on which decisions were not taken."

Mr John Peter Yaw Tetteh, a pensioner who was formerly with the Accountant-General's Department, told the Ghana News Agency that there must be radical reforms at the institutional levels since pensioners could not insert "ghost names" on payroll.

He said: "An individual pensioner does not have the ability to add any name. Those in the system must be dealt with." A retired solder, Corporal Asirifi Mensah described the exercise as "good", but pointed out that although government increased their pensions with effect from May last year, the Accountant-General had refused to pay them the increase.

Mr John Lartey, Deputy Auditor told the Ghana News Agency that the exercise was not only to rid the payroll of "ghost names", but to expunge the names of the dead from government payrolls. "There are people who are dead but relatives have not informed the authorities."