Korle Bu saves GH¢5m after audit of new employees
A special audit of 690 newly employed staff at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital has resulted in the government saving GH¢5 million.
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The government would have paid GH¢11.7 million to the 690 newly employed workers as salary arrears for 21 months.
It rather paid a little over GH¢5.6 million after a head count and vetting of the letters of appointment of the new employees.
The acting Chief Administrator of the hospital, Rev. Albert O. Botchway, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic, said all the newly appointed staff members were paid according to when they took up their jobs.
Of the 690 newly employed staff members, who included doctors and technicians, 423 were nurses.
However, during the head count from October 23 to November 5, 2013, 84 of the nurses could not be accounted for.
According to Rev. Botchway, it took days and nights of painstaking work by his team to ensure that each of the workers was paid according to when he or she took up the position.
What came out during the head count and vetting was that some of the newly employed staff, who had all been classified as having worked for 21 months without pay, “had taken up appointments just about three months ago, while others had actually worked for 21 months without pay”.
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He said although it had not been easy treading the path that the present board and management had chosen to ensure that the right thing was done, they would continue to ensure that the government saved money for development projects.
The anomaly was detected after junior nurses at Korle Bu had, on September 30, 2013, embarked on a sit-down strike against the management of the hospital for the release of their delayed salaries.
Out of the 690 names submitted to the Ministry of Health (MoH), upon request, only 432 picked up their cheques paid by Korle Bu from its internally generated funds.
That prompted the MoH to call for a head count of all staff of the hospital.