Controller, SOFTribe payroll fight needless - Duffuor
Former Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor has called for a ceasefire between the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) and the software company, SOFTribe Ghana Limited over who to blame for a bloated public payroll system.
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According to Dr Duffuor, the ongoing fight was needless, and rather advised the two to put their heads together and help clean the system.
“I don’t think Controller and SOFTribe should fight over this. We should look at the issue critically, who can help us clean the payroll, make it more efficient, so that we don’t lose money,” Dr Duffuor said in a radio interview on Citi FM Wednesday morning.
‘Akatua’ had no problems
Dr Duffuor however expressed surprise at the decision by the CAGD and the Finance Ministry to drop the payroll software ‘Akatua’ developed by the Ghanaian company, SOFTribe explaining that the software was working efficiently before he left office.
In 2007, the government decided to migrate the payrolls of subvented agencies onto a mechanised payroll managed by the CAGD.
The CAGD therefore contracted SOFTribe in 2008 to develop a back-up payroll system, referred to as IPPD 3, used to run the payrolls of the Ghana Education Service (GES) and pensioners on Microsoft Navision.
However, in 2013, the CAGD suspended all further migration of the payroll unto 'Akatua'.
Last week, IMANI Ghana, a policy think tank accused the CAGD of supervising a bloated public payroll system. In response, the CAGD blamed the software provided by Softribe as the cause.
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However, in defending their product, SOFTribe released some letters exchanged between it and the CAGD, a situation which has angered the CAGD. Consequently, the CAGD has threatened to sue the company for releasing such documents.
On Tuesday, the CAGD held a press conference and denied media reports of anomalies on the government payroll and threatened legal action against the peddlers of that information.
Needless fight
In the interview on Citi FM, Dr Duffuor, who once served as a Governor of the Bank of Ghana said, “any money we lose affect a child in school and affect the whole country. So it is not an issue we should fight over. What can we do? If there is anything like a software that can help us clean the payroll it would affect everybody including those who are quarrelling or fighting.”
“So I pray that we will look for a company that will help us clean the payroll, no matter where that company comes from so that we would be able to maximize the revenue and minismise the leakages.”
“…my advice is that we should not fight, we should look for a software that will help us. SOFTribe is a Ghanaian company, let them do it. If they cannot do it, of course, what I saw about them…they performed.”
“It is a product that I believe can work. If something has gone wrong, it is between them and the Controller. Let them resolve the issue.”
Listen to Dr Duffuor in the audio attached below
{mp3}duffuor_payrollresponse{/mp3}
Background
The former Finance Minister said when he became a Minister in 2009, the CAGD had already procured the software ‘Akatua’ from SOFTribe and had certified the efficiency of the software.”
Dr Duffuor said the CAGD had mentioned that everything SOFTribe had done was first class and added that on February 12, 2010, SOFTribe wrote to Controller on the major risks they had discovered after the training they had done and highlighted all the risks to the controller.
“I did not receive any letter from Controller saying what they were saying was wrong. Indeed, we also gave them some work on the pensions and it was done beautifully, satisfactory. So I did not see any difficulty with the Akatua product or software. So between me and the late President [Mills], we decided that they should be given the chance to do even more to help the IPPD 2 to move the whole thing forward. In fact the IPPD 3 was procured to be a backup product.”
“When we asked them to do more, we thought it was going to help IPPD 2 to move the venture forward, so I wrote that letter, asking them to do that.”
However, in 2013, the CAGD suspended all further migration of the payroll unto 'Akatua'.
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“I was surprised because this letter was written and copied to so many people. I was surprised to hear that it stopped. I do not know why it stopped… I did not get any reaction from anybody that the IPPD 3 was not good enough or couldn’t do the job.