Gov’t to save GH¢414m from ‘ghost names’

As much as GH¢414 million could be saved by government through the deployment of the Electronic Salary Payment Vouchers (ESPV) to rid the public sector payroll of illusory workers, otherwise known as ‘ghost names’.

Seth Terkper, the Finance Minister, during a mid-year budget review submitted to Parliament said success in the pilot phase of the ESPV in the Greater Accra Region portends that GH¢414million could be saved per annum.

The ESPV system provides online access to heads of management units and human resource managers to approve staff being paid for a particular month as well as the amounts to be paid to them.

Managers also have 24-hour access to the payroll data, and have adequate time to continuously review the payroll report.

“Projecting this result to the entire mechanised payroll and discounting it by 40 percent generates an estimated savings of GH¢414million per annum or GH¢172.5 million for the rest of the year,” he said.

As at the end of June, the system had been deployed to 73.3 percent of management units in the Greater Accra Region.

The validation of the June payroll for these management units has resulted in the deletion of 266 names and blocking for investigation of 2,531 staff.

The total estimated payroll cost of the 2,797 staff is GH¢36.7million per annum.

Government expenditure on wages and salaries from January to May 2014 stood at GH¢3.8million, higher than the budget target of GH¢3.7million.

The expenditure on wages and salaries for the first five months of the year is also 26.2 percent higher than the outturn for the same period in 2013.
Government also spent another GH¢348.5million on the payment of wage arrears.

As at the end of June 2014 about 385,000 government employees on the mechanised payroll, representing 75 percent with a geographical coverage of 90 percent, had been registered on the electronic pay slips system (E-Pay) being championed by the Finance Ministry.

Mr. Terkper noted that “the verbal complaints by employees on salaries have minimised because the system provides information to employees as well as an avenue for channelling of complaints”.

Government is confident of registering all public sector workers on the E-Pay by the end of 2014.

By Dominick Andoh | B&FT Online | Ghana