A two-day workshop on the new electronic salary payment vouchers (ESPV), has ended in the Western Region with a call on heads of department to ensure proper validation before salaries are paid.

The ESPV has been developed to ensure that the government wage bill is cleared off non- existent (ghost) names and save the national coffers of financial loses.

Mr Emmanuel Opoku-Mensah, Regional Director of Controller and Accountants Generals’ Department mentioned that already six regions have been hooked onto the system.

He said: "The benefits are so huge that it has impacted positively on the wage bill. The public wage bill had dropped from 70 to 57 per cent. "

The new system enjoined heads of department to validate employees before their salaries are paid.

Mr Opoku-Mensah added that the system also places a great task on heads of department to capture and expose unscrupulous elements in the system.
He said the introduction of the E-pay slip began the process of addressing the grey areas in the payroll system.