‘Ghosts’ haunt Korle Bu; 1,052 on hospital’s payroll
One thousand and fifty-two members of staff cannot be accounted for at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) after a head count.
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An additional 60 who are paid through the hospital’s internally generated funds (IGFs) can also not be accounted for.
Of the 1,052 members of staff, 490 belong to other institutions but work under KBTH, while 84 are newly-employed nurses at the hospital.
The head count by the KBTH, in conjunction with the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department, which started on October 23, 2013 and ended on November 5, 2013, revealed that some of the members of staff who had passed away, been dismissed or vacated their post still had their names on the government or the hospital’s payroll.
The acting Chief Administrator of the KBTH, Rev Albert O. Botchway, who made this known at a press conference in Accra yesterday, said, “I will have the list published in the media and on the hospital’s website for a period of one week,” adding that after that the names of those who did not show up would be deleted from the government of Ghana and the hospital’s payrolls.
He said those who would be found culpable would be made to face the full rigours of the law.
Findings
According to Rev Botchway, 4,252 members of staff of the hospital were on the government payroll, while 347 were on the hospital’s payroll.
For the past 22 months, he said, the hospital had employed 423 nurses who were yet to be put on the GoG payroll and were, therefore, being paid by the hospital since October 2013 after a directive from the Ministry of Health.
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He said out of the 4,252 staff on GoG payroll, only 2,752 personally appeared and checked their names during the head count.
He said since Korle-Bu had other institutions such as the Ministry of Education working within it, whose staff are considered staff of the KBTH, 490 of such staff were yet to be counted.
On those paid from the IGFs, he said 287 out of 347 personally checked their names, leaving 60 who had not been counted.
Of the 423 newly employed nurses, 339 presented themselves for counting, leaving 84 who were yet to be counted.
He gave an assurance that the team would thoroughly scrutinise the names and find out whether they were real or ghost names.
Way forward
To find a lasting and realistic solution to the problems with the payroll, Rev Botchway said the MoH and the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department were rolling out an electronic payroll management system in the hospital to be implemented from December 2013.
That, he said, would help the hospital to be actively involved in managing its own payroll and eliminate the problems associated with it.
Rev Botchway said there would be several in-built levels of validation by supervisors, heads of departments and units and directors of the hospital to ensure that people worked before they were paid.
Also to ensure that the system was made tighter to deter people from infiltrating ghost names into them, a clock-in system was to be introduced soon to monitor the attendance of staff on a daily basis.