The Controller and Accountant General, Mr. Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem has stated that his outfit is going to align its payroll data with that of the National Identification Authority (NIA) as a way of validating employees before payment in an attempt to “clear all ghost names from it system”.
The Accountant General explained that there is a special electronic validation system in place that ensures that at the end of each month after the payroll is processed, it is sent back to the MMDA’s to ascertain whether indeed those on the payroll are supposed to be paid.
“If they are not supposed to be on the payroll, we clear them”. The controller and Accountant General, Mr. Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem assured participants of the 2022 Annual Conference held at Cape Coast over the weekend.
“However, we are also going to align our payroll data with that of the NIA and that will be a reference point to validating people existing on the payroll, that I can assure you”.
Adding that “the ghost names, I believe nowadays we don’t hear the ghost names, I think they have adopted a new name but we will keep on fighting until we have a zero-ghost name”.
The Deputy Controller and Accountant-General in charge of payroll, Mr. Wisdom Komlan Messan also added that “the law actually makes the management of the payroll the responsibility of both the Controller and Accountant General and the employer institution”.
“The inputs that we process emanates from institutions through their PPA’s and HR processing centres, for as long as the quality of the information that come into the system is fraudulent, you are likely to have issues on the payroll”. He said
Mr. Komlan Messan called on heads of institutions to recruit, discipline and take out people who are not supposed to be on the payroll “now if you fail to do that, you are creating a ghost name, and the law will find and deal with you”.
The Controller General and his deputies were responding to questions from staff from all 16 regions of Controller and Accountant General Department held at Cape-Coast at their 2022 annual conference.
Concerns of most of these staff were being victimized for doing the right thing or their directors using transfers as way of punishment.