General News of Saturday, 14 March 2015
Source: Graphic Online
Government has suspended the salaries of 2,690 public workers until the outcome of investigations into dubious payroll documents covering the employees, the Finance Minister, Mr Seth Terkper, has announced.
After the investigations, he said, the ministry would apply appropriate sanctions against those who had flouted regulations.
Mr Terkper, who made the announcement in Parliament last Thursday, explained that the move was part of several measures adopted by the government to clean the public payroll of ghost names.
He was in the House to brief members on the implications of the fall in crude oil prices on the international market, for the country’s 2015 budget.
Mechanised payroll
He said the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) had begun another exercise to suspend the salaries of employees who are on the mechanised payroll but without social security numbers.
“Opportunity has been provided to employees on the mechanised payroll to update their records by end of March after which the names will be permanently expunged,” he said.
Mr Terkper said as of the end of February 2015, 44,496 names out of the total 47,186 employees on government payroll had been validated by the Audit Service and restored onto the payroll.
E-zwich
He also said following the success in using the E-Switch [E-zwich] for public sector wage payments, the exercise had been extended to the payment of allowances of National Service Personnel and would be extended to all employees on the mechanised payroll.
“The aim of this exercise is to validate employees using the E-Switch database. For the month of February 2015, the National Service Secretariat paid its personnel on E-Switch cards. The exercise will ensure a single identity for each employee on the payroll,” Mr Terpker said.
The E-SPV system
Mr Terkper said in line with government policy to use ICT to drive business processes in the public service, the CAGD had developed and deployed an electronic salary payment voucher system (E-SPV) for use by heads of MMDAs, adding that “validation and certification through the E-SPV system has now become a precondition for payment of salaries to employees,” saying that unit heads now determined who should be paid for a particular month.
The minister said so far, the E-SPV system had been deployed in four regions and was hopeful that nationwide rollout would be completed by June.