Govt makes gains deleting ghost names
The government has made gains in dealing with the ghost-name menace which has consistently drained the national coffers of millions of cedis.
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The Minister of Finance, Mr Seth Terkper, reported that between January and September last year the government deleted a total of 5,861 names from the government payroll, thus saving the country some GH¢111.26 million over the nine month period.
According to Mr Terkper, this was done through the deployment of an Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (E-SPV) system that allowed for real-time validation of each employee before monthly salaries are paid.
Impact of the E- SPV
The government deployed the E-SPV a couple of years ago as an enhancement on the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) which aims at better tracking government expenditure, allocations and assets.
The E-SPV allows public sector workers paid through the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to access their payment vouchers electronically and even print them out.
It also allows the government, the CAGD and the Ministry of Finance to receive real-time notifications from districts in which workers are at post and deserve their pay cheques for any particular month.
The deployment of the system in 2011 began with a nationwide biometric registration of all public sector workers on government payroll, which allowed the setting up of a database.
It is part of an electronic human resource management information system (HRMIS), a module under the GIFMIS system, which the finance minister believes is a sure way to control ghost names on the country’s public sector payroll.
The database, which is validated periodically with the biodata of the employees, allows the system to capture only living beings. A secondary validation is provided by local directors regarding the availability of the individuals at work.
“The Head of Unit now determines who should be paid for a particular month,” Mr Terkper stated.
In 2011, it was estimated that the biometric registration system and the subsequent deletion of ‘ghost’ names on public sector payroll could save the country more than GH¢600 million a year.
“This has become imperative because the Controller and Accountant General has for long acted as government’s accountant and human resource manager, which has not helped in keeping unscrupulous names off public sector payroll,” Mr Terkper said.
Telling the turn-around story recently, Mr Terkper also stated that Cabinet had approved a Treasury Single Account and action plan to improve treasury and cash management. “This is important in tracking government expenditure and disbursements.”
Public Financial Management reform
The finance minister also announced that a draft Public Financial Management Bill had been prepared.
The bill, part of a major reform in the public financial management system, will consolidate all laws bordering on managing public finances to improve reporting, accountability and transparency.
The consolidated laws will repeal the Loans Act of 1972, the much recent Financial Administration Act and introduce more stringent provisions on accountability and reporting by not only the Ministry of Finance but the executive as well as Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to enhance transparency.