Contract Employment, bane of Ghana’s payroll woes

By Alice Tettey /
Afedzi Abdullah, GNA

Elmina (C/R), July
17, GNA – Mr Daniel Yao Demelevo, the Auditor General, has kicked against
contract employment because the practice was draining the country of huge sums
of financial resources that could be utilised to develop the nation.

He noted with great
concern that some public workers, as old as 70 years who had reached retiring
age had falsified documents just to perpetuate their stay in office and yet
expected their unemployed children and relatives to be employed in the public
sector but continued to overstay their office. 

“I think one of the
major problems we have in this country is contract employment. We have to say
it and say it as it is, that when the curtain falls, it is time to leave the
stage. You must go home and join your grandchildren so that others can also
come” he stated

Mr Demelevo who was
speaking at the launch of the National Payroll and Personnel Validation Audit
exercise at Elmina on Monday, observed with worry that “the system continued to
pay ghosts who are removed from the payroll only to resurrect again”.

The nationwide
enumeration exercise which is expected to be completed by the end of November
is aimed at cleaning the “bloated’ payroll.

The exercise which
kick- started on Tuesday, July 17 in the Central Regional Capital, Cape Coast
is being carried out by the Audit Service in collaboration with the Controller
and Accountant-General Department.

The Auditor General,
therefore warned that he was on a “deadly mission” with the Special Prosecutor
to prosecute those who would be found culpable at the end of the exercise and
would go all out to ensure that the government payroll was cleaned to save the
country the needed financial resources.

According to him, of
every 0ne Cedi collected as revenue, 44. 7 pesewas went into the payment of
public sector workers, stating that it was the bane of the country’s
development and growth.

Mr Demelevo also
argued that it was “irrational” for the country to contract persons who retired
on their salaries and put them on the government payroll, while there were so
many unemployed graduates as a result of lack of funds.

“The former Auditor
General for example, retires  on his  salary so anytime my salary goes up, his also
enjoys salary increase and so if you engage such a person again as a contract
person, there is so much being spent on one person, meanwhile our graduates
don’t have jobs to do”

“We cannot have
people unemployed who want to be employed and we have people on the payroll who
are not employed. Because we are paying ghosts, we cannot engage our graduates”
he added.

He said he would
activate his constitutional mandate under Article 187 Clause 7 to disallow the
expenditure and on whoever’s payroll he found in the ghost names.

Mr Domelevo urged
Heads of institutions and agencies to collaborate with the Service to ensure a
clean payroll adding that, they had a duty to ensure that people who were paid
on their payroll were those who worked for them only according to the Financial
Administration Regulation.

He admonished the
enumerators to be professional, diligent and discharge their duties without
fear or favour to establish the facts as it was for systems to be put in place
to address them.

Mr Kwamena Duncan,
Central Regional Minister noted that though some achievements had been made in
cleaning the payroll data, challenges waged on as perpetrators continued to map
out new strategies to stay on the payroll.

He said such
financial leakages were a threat to national development and implored all to
support the efforts of the Audit Service and the Controller and Accountant
General Department in their quest to ensure clean payroll.

He commended the
Audit Service for the initiative and added that protecting the national purse
was a collective responsibility which every Ghanaian must assist accordingly.

Mr George Winful,
Deputy Auditor General and Team Leader of the enumeration exercise said it
would be conducted in a way that would not disrupt government business and
urged all public workers not to take it for granted.

He said about
600,000 workers out of which 51,000 were from the Central Region were expected
to be enumerated under the exercise.

GNA

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