‘Football age’ lands NADMO official in trouble
An official of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) in the Jasikan District in the Volta Region who tried to outsmart the biometric registration carried out by the Controller and Accountant General Department (CAGD) by reducing his age by 11 years has been caught in the trap of inconsistencies.
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According to the 2013 Auditor General’s Report on Public Boards, Corporations and other statutory institutions, during the review of the personal records of employees of NADMO at Jasikan for the biometric registration, it came to light that one Iddrisu Alhassan reduced his age by 11 years.
According to the report, records in Alhassan’s personal file showed that he was born on September 5, 1978.
However, during the biometric registration, his date of birth was captured as January 1, 1989.
Copies of his school certificates and other documents, however, confirmed September 5, 1978 as accurate.
The Auditor General, therefore, urged management of NADMO to take all available steps by contacting the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD) office of the CAGD to change Alhassan’s date of birth back to 1978.
Exorcising the ghosts
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning on April 7, 2011, launched a project to clear ghost names from the government’s payroll.
The exercise aimed at collecting the biometric data of some 730,000 public sector employees and pensioners.
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Apart from cutting down on payroll fraud, the system was designed for the government to know the true identity of all its employees or entitlement beneficiaries.
Age cheating
In Ghana, age cheating is a growing trend. Some pensionable employees who are fear stricken and depressed when they are due for retirement sometimes go to the extent of doctoring the records of their date of birth in order to stay at post a few more years.
The phenomenon is also prevalent in football circles. It is no secret that some African youth teams are often suspected of being full of overage players, with age scandals hitting the likes of Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya in the past.
In October last year, the country’s national U-17 team was disqualified from the 2015 U-17 Championship for age cheating.
The Black Starlets had beaten Cameroun over two legs to qualify for the tournament to be played in Niger but the Camerounian officials reported Ghana for suspected age cheating which was eventually confirmed by Confederation of African Football MRI scans.