Government determined to rid public sector payroll of “ghost names”

Despite government’s determination to rid the public sector payroll of unauthorised names, public sector wage bill has been rising sharply over the past years in relation to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other expenditures.

Consequently, government is taking pragmatic steps to wean the public sector payroll of such “ghost names”, because it is one of the reasons for the sudden rise in public sector wage bill and not wage or salary increases only.

Finance and Economic Planning Minister Kwabena Duffour said these when he presenting a supplementary budget of GH¢1,463,123,559 to Parliament for approval for the 2011 Financial Year.

He said “One major contributing factor to the failure of past initiatives to remove “ghost names” has been the lack of adequate mechanisms to effectively identify “ghost names” on the payroll and delete them.”

Dr Duffour said government had embarked on an effective way of dealing with the issue of ”ghost names” on the public sector payroll using electronic approach, entailing the capturing of biometric data of employees in the payroll system to check fraud and impersonation.

He said the electronic system had proven to be successful in most countries that experienced payroll fraud in the past.

The minister said the process of capturing finger prints of pensioners and their dependants had already begun in the Regions and expected to be completed soon.

Source: GNA