Ghosts on payroll must be exorcised

The country has been bedevilled with the ills of ghost names for some years now.Our governments have tried time and again to kill this canker, with very little success.
It appears that those behind the ghost names syndrome are very sophisticated and perhaps understand the payroll system.

Just like the way other criminal gangs work, the syndicate involved in ghosts names must have collaborators in those institutions that are struggling to come to terms with these ills destroying our economy.

The state may have lost millions of cedis to the syndicate of ghosts names, although we do not know how much has gone into private pockets.

We have had occasion in the past to draw attention to the harm being caused the economy, with sectors such as health and education suffering from the actions of selfish individuals who take advantage of the loopholes to siphon public funds for private gain.

The Daily Graphic finds it difficult to understand why, over the years, successive governments have tried without success to bust the ghost names syndicate.

Perhaps we are not trying hard enough or the people behind the syndicate are more sophisticated than the state apparatus charged with the responsibility of fighting white-collar crime.

We know that crime has become more sophisticated in recent times, as the criminal gangs also take advantage of technology to perfect their act in order to make more gain.

It is for this reason that all governments, especially their finance ministers and their teams, always make it a priority to stop the ghost names phenomenon that has bloated the payroll in the public service.

Regrettably, the phenomenon is still alive in the public service at this stage when we are told that about 70 per cent of our revenue is used to service the public wage bill.

With the introduction of the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP), wages and salaries in the public service have gone up to motivate workers to increase productivity.

This gesture by the government to motivate workers has, unfortunately, put a strain on the national economy and it behoves all patriotic citizens to help the government to expose all those who profit from our collective efforts to rebuild the economy.

The Daily Graphic is alarmed that in spite of the efforts to deal with the challenges through staff audit, head counts and other schemes, the deviants are bent on creating challenges for managers of the public pay policy.

Four hundred and forty out of the 690 junior nurses at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) whose names were submitted for the payment of their 21-month salary arrears are either ghosts or non-nursing staff members the hospital.

But for the vigilance of officials of Korle-Bu, these ghosts workers would have benefited from compensation that they do not deserve.

The Daily Graphic calls on the Ministry of Finance, the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department and other public institutions to undertake regular head counts to ensure that only those employed are paid at the end of the month.

The axe must also fall heavily on those who perpetrate the ghost names syndicate to serve as a deterrent to the gangs and their collaborators in the public service as a more pragmatic approach to exorcise the ghosts from the payroll of the public service.

Daily Graphic/Ghana