The deputy Finance Minister, Kwaku Kwarteng said Tuesday that those criticizing efforts by government to rid the public payroll of “ghost names” are those inputting the said names in the system.
NAGRAT has been on a collision course with government following an announcement that teachers who defaulted in getting their biometric data captured by SSNIT would forfeit their salaries for April.
The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta last week ordered the removal of about 26,589 names of public workers from the government’s payroll.
Those affected, according to him in a statement, have not been registered on the new SSNIT biometric system, despite several directives to do so.
As a result, payment of their salaries would be suspended indefinitely until they have completed their SSNIT re-registration – a move NAGRAT described as punitive.
But speaking on Morning Starr, Mr. Kwarteng said government will not back down from its campaign.
He said the people revolting against the move are doing so because they have entered illegitimate names into the government’s payroll system and that they are scared of being exposed hence the agitation.
“This is how we have been running this country and we keep going down,” he bemoaned in an interaction with Morning Starr host, Francis Abban.
Gov’t deletes 26,589 names
Last week the Controller and Accountant General Department received an order from the Finance Minister to expunge 26, 589 names of public workers from the government’s payroll.
Those affected, the ministry clarified in a statement failed to biometrically register with SSNIT despite several directives to do so.
Ghosts at YEA
In that same week the management of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) detected some 2,999 ghost names on the Agency’s payroll, saving the State about GHs1, 067,700 in the process.
A statement signed by the acting Deputy CEO of the Agency in Charge of Operations, Bashiru Ibrahim, explained that the said ghost names were detected after an audit revealed that payments were made to some beneficiaries with no work done.
“On the basis of these findings, management has commissioned the Internal Audit Agency to conduct a special audit into the operations of the agency. This has become necessary in order to provide a platform for the new administration to take measures to prevent the scandals that rocked the Agency in the past,” the statement said.
