Chop-chop, Ghost Names Killing Ghana Big Time

The country is losing millions of cedis due to the deliberate bloating of payrolls with ghost names at the Comptroller and Accountant General Department (CAGD), ministries, civil service and several public companies in the country. Salaries are recorded and paid to non-existing workers and these monies land in the pockets of the Comptroller, accountants of various companies and management. Some of these ghost workers whose birthdays indicate that they are between ninety and hundred years still remain on the payroll. There are about a total of seventy thousand ghost names appearing on payrolls countrywide, causing Ghana to lose millions of cedis in fake payments The Times of London stated in no uncertain terms the anger of the European Union (EU) towards Ghana. The EU anti-fraud agency was set to probe a mammoth corruption scandal involving millions of pounds in Ghana, being aid package from the EU to support the country's budget. Investigations revealed that the money found its way into the pockets of 'ghost workers' in government. The anti-fraud agency confirmed that hundreds of thousands of fictitious state employees were kept on Ghana's public payroll which was partly financed by aid money coming from EU and Britain.

It was recently discovered that the payroll of the Ghana Education Service (GES) was bloated with ghost names. 2,913 ghost names have so far been detected and removed from the GES payroll. This anomaly has gone on for decades and the directors and accountants who benefitted from this were held accountable. According to Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Deputy Minister of Education, the names were detected when the Ministry conducted an audit of its staff in seven regions of the country. According to the Deputy Minister, a similar audit is going on in the three northern regions. It is amazing that despite the overstaffing of teachers at the basic level which has compelled many teachers to sit idle at the GES offices, ghost names persisted on the payroll. In the Volta region alone there were 25,725 teachers at the basic level and there was still an excess of 1720 teachers. These figures were what existed on paper, but the reality on the ground showed a staff shortage of 3720 and, incredibly, 244 schools did not have enough teachers! “This is sad indeed”, the Minister said this when he was interviewed by Daily Guide in November 2014. It turned out that most of the names recorded as staff members were ghost workers. The Central region also had an excess of 1,426 teachers and yet 34 schools lacked teachers for certain subjects.

56-year-old Gilbert Kwasi Mensah Addison, an accounts officer at the Comptroller and Accountant- General’s Department, was apprehended by the Commercial Crime Unit (CCU) of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, together with three others for allegedly embezzling an amount of GH¢102, 207.00 belonging to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The four are currently assisting the police to investigate the matter. Superintendent Felix Mawusi, Director in charge of the CCU, confirmed that the theft was detected on November 13, 2014 by the registrar of the council who reported the matter to the police. According to him, the theft was detected at the Western Regional office of the council at Takoradi. This occurred from October 1, 2013 to October 31, 2014. Gilbert Addison, who had been seconded to the Western Regional branch of the council, allegedly said, on interrogation, that he used the money to pay his personal debts and had intended to pay it back. SIKADIE NKOAA!

Police further disclosed that Addison used his position to embezzle the money but failed to pay back into the council’s account at the Takoradi branch of the Bank of Ghana. Supt. Mawusi assured the council that investigation was still going on.

It is quite sad and shameful for the top brass in management positions in Ghana to deliberately allow duplication of names to persist on the payroll for so many years. A 2012 final audit report by an international audit agency on government’s payroll system revealed that there were 3,288 potential duplicate employees that had been identified as having identical first and last names, national identifier, date of birth and joining date.

The agency recommended that as a matter of urgency, duplicate checks on employee first name, last name, date of birth and other key parameters, if applicable, should be introduced into the payroll system, adding that, data entered during hire should be validated and rejected or notified in case of potential duplicates. However, deputy Finance Minister, Mona Quartey, says public sector wage bill has dropped from 70% of government revenue to 57% after a rigorous process to remove ghost names.

The government of Ghana has about 600,000 workers on its payroll, taking a big chunk of 74% of the state generated revenue. However, it has emerged that not all the names listed are in active service. Responding to the demands and pressure of EU, the government has charged an internationally acclaimed auditing firm, KPMG, to identify and remove all ghost and duplicate names from the government payroll. All suspicious account numbers that defy modern accounting principles are to be identified and deleted. Those whose date of births exceed the pension age and also names appearing twice are to be deleted from the government’s payroll system.

The latest and most serious revelation of fraud on the government’s payroll was reported in all newspapers in the country. CAGD imputed data into the IPPD2 payroll software formerly used by the government, without leaving any auditing trail. Adwen bone! What it actually implies is that the data fed into the system did not contain any information about who put the data in and when it was entered. The auditing firm easily detected ghost names in the CAGD’s payroll. The government reacted immediately and wrote to the Comptroller to connect with the software developer, SOFTTRIBE to develop completely new payroll software, with strict warnings to the comptroller of the consequences of all the ghost names detected.

Ghost names appearing on payrolls have caused a lot of harm not only to government and private corporations but to the country as a whole. The deliberate anomaly created a loss for the country. About GHC70 to 100 million are lost through ghost names, enriching directors, managers and Accountants of various companies, departments and civil service. Paying salaries to non-existent workers is one of the main reasons why government is not able to fulfil the role of paying workers like teachers, nurses, dentists and many more.

The ghost names have been identified and steps are being taken to remove all from the payrolls. Sadly enough those who manufactured the ghost names are still in place. They were not sacked. Apart from the director of GES, the Comptroller and all the big fishes have still not been trapped in the net of accountability or dismissal. The government must be more serious and focused to tackle this problem once and for all because no government has been able to solve this completely. Only ad-hoc measures have been going on for decades. Dear reader, don’t you think they will still manufacture the ghosts?


Written by Stephen Atta Owusu
Author: Dark Faces at Crossroads
Email: stephen.owusu@email.com