A Fellow at the Centre for Democratic Improvement (CDD) Ghana, claims the Auditor General’s Department ought to transfer from conducting payroll audits to forensic audits.
Professor Kwaku Asare said this will empower it to fish out creators of ghost names in several authorities places of work.
The Accounting professor thinks that is the only way to conclusion the difficulty of ghost names which has develop into rampant in the country’s civil service.
“These ghost difficulties are as old as the republic itself. Each individual yr the Auditor-Typical conducts his audits and experiences that there are ghosts. We talk about it for a couple times and then we shift on without nearly anything occurring.
“So to me it’s no for a longer time exciting that there are ghost staff but what is exciting for me is who is building this ghosts and why do not we go just after them?”
His opinions occur immediately after the Auditor General’s Department disclosed that Ghana has misplaced some ¢564.2 million to ghost names on the payroll of Ministries, Departments and Organizations (MDAs).
The Auditor General’s Office following conducting a payroll audit on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), identified that the general public purse has missing an quantity of ¢564.2 million to ‘ghost’ names.
These unaccounted for personnel make up ¢467.6 million of the total unearned salaries.
The periodic audit training, which was carried out in 2018, in accordance with Area 16 of the Audit Provider Act, 2000 (Act 584) unveiled that 7,823 ‘ghost’ workforce existed in 21 MDAs.
In accordance to the report, the different MDAs include things like, ministries of Instruction, Finance, Electricity, Defence, Communications, Data, Wellness, the Interior, Railway Enhancement and Foreign Affairs.
The many others are, Community Government and Rural Enhancement, Chieftaincy and Spiritual Affairs, Work and Labour Relations, Foods and Agriculture, Setting, Science, Technology and Innovation, Fisheries and Aquaculture Improvement, Lands and All-natural Sources and Gender, Youngsters and Social Protection, Streets and Highways, Transport, Sanitation and H2o Assets and Justice and Attorney-Basic.
And the Businesses are the Fee on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the Electoral Fee, the Judicial Provider and the Regional Authorities Provider.
Mr Asare who was baffled by the higher quantities of ghost names recorded at these MDAs reported the act of making ghost names is a deliberate plan to extort monies from federal government purse, therefore, it need to be tackled from the root in buy to connect with it a issue of the previous.
“When we glance at the report there are three ministries the Training Ministry has about 5000 ghosts and it is alleged that payments to these ghosts exceed ¢200 million.
“Then the Health and fitness Ministry has 1300 ghosts and payments exceed ¢127 million. Community Authorities Ministry also has 548 ghosts with payments exceeding ¢34 million.
“We have to perform a forensic audit of the ministries and go beyond a payroll audit, with an intend to figure out what specific schemes are enabling these ghost payments, who are the ring leaders of this plan so that we can administer a blow to them that will strike fear in any person who intends to carry up a ghost plan to other departments,” he claimed on Newsfile.
He likened the procedure to a method in which “one lender account permits about 30 or 40 individuals to deposit their paycheck,’” which he explained as appaling.
“That is a no-no in any payroll program. Various suspected fraudulent certificates applied for employment, above-leverage staff there is a plan that no employee ought to be allowed to deduct 50 % of his salary for installment payments but which is not followed.
“They have invested in an oracle platform which is a gorgeous platform which can be configured in methods that permit some validation controls but they do not do that and that is for the reason that they want this to persist.
“They are unable to have ex-gratia so they also design and style their individual strategies and except we determine out how to stop the problem at the major, these other issues will continue on,” he claimed.
