Only one million Ghanaians take half gov't revenue

The Auditor-General, Mr Daniel Yaw Domelevo says his motivation to cleanse Ghana’s payroll stems from the fact that Ghana spends almost half of its total revenue to pay less than one million people.

“If we take the 28 million Ghanaians, we are spending about half of our revenue on less than one-million Ghanaians,” he said, adding, “that is why I think we should wage our war into payroll being a major consumer of our resources.”

Mr Domelevo and his team are in the Central Region to kick-start an exercise aimed at cleansing the country’s payroll structure.

Read also: Amidu, Auditor-General collaborate to audit payroll

According to him, the country has only about “six hundred and something thousand” people on its payroll, expressing the need for an urgent action to check the country’s payroll.

He said it is unacceptable for the country to spend almost half of its total revenue on an insignificant number of its total population.

“We may have to defend our country, people think donor support will develop Ghana. Nobody is coming to build your father’s house for you, you have to build your own father’s house,” Mr Domelevo bemoaned.

Collaboration

The Auditor-General’s Department and the Office of the Special Prosecutor are collaborating to audit the payroll of the entire public service.

This is based on the suspicion that the payroll contains some ghost names.

The exercise is being supported by the Ministry of Finance through the support of the World Bank.

The issue of ghost names has bedevilled the government’s payroll for years, in spite of the frequent cleansing of the payroll through the deletion of thousands of ghost names.

However, some public workers have raised concerns about the frequent audit of the payroll.

The Auditor-General believes that the exercise would help the government to save monies that are wrongly paid to people who find their names on the payroll but do not work.