by Abubakar Ibrahim
Labour unions including the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) have questioned Government’s claim that it has saved millions of cedis by cleaning the public payroll and removing ghost names.
Their scepticism follows complaints by some of their members whose names have been mistakenly removed from the payroll.
The GMA, for instance, say the exercise has been riddled with errors.
On May Day, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said the country has saved GHC443 million following the Finance Ministry's suspension of salary payment to some 26,589 public workers in April 2017.
He said the comprehensive payroll audit conducted by the Ministry within the last two months has purged the system of ghost names and saved the nation some money.
According to him, the country spent GHC36,166,203 per month to maintain the 26,589 ghost workers on government payroll.
“These 'workers' have not come forward to be biometrically verified by Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), despite numerous calls by the Controller and Accountant General to do so," he said.
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta on April 18 directed the Controller and Accountant General's Department to delete the names of 26,589 workers from the payroll for not registering on the new SSNIT biometric system.
The biometric verification is essential to isolate ghost names from the government's payroll.
To avoid anomalies, he instructed the Controller to notify all public servants on government's mechanised payroll system who had not registered on the new system to do so.
The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has had issues with the directive after Graduate Teachers threatened to take legal action against government if it goes ahead to withhold the salaries of over 26,000 members yet to register on a biometric platform.
In the latest incident, Dr Hardy Mohammed Abdullah, a specialist surgeon and senior resident with the neurosurgery unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital has told JOYNEWS the situation has caused unnecessary embarrassment and inconvenience for him and his colleagues.
"It was a rude shock and sad to me because the day it happened, I was on duty with some colleagues. It was not because they had not registered because we went through the same process as everybody.
"They have registered and have been verified biometrically and their salaries have been coming through but an error from a state institution has been visited on them and they have to bear the brunt," he said.
Describing what has happened as a "fallacy", Dr Abdallah said those of them affected are people who are well known.
He said what the Ministry has done has implications adding he and other affected colleagues have been to the Controller to get the situation corrected.
The situation is not restricted to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital as the General Secretary of the GMA, Dr Justice Yankson told Joy News he has received reports more than 200 doctors at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi are also affected.
He said government must enhance the exercise before rushing to applaud itself for deleting ghost names.
To read the full piece from myjoyonline.com, click here.