CLOGSAG executives preparing to address the media
The Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana (CLOGSAG) is mounting a serious challenge against the government’s position that there are 26,000 ghost names on the public sector payroll.
According the Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, Isaac Bampoe Addo, the introduction of the Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (ESPV) since 2014 should never give rise to the presence of ghost names since every worker is supposed to have been validated.
Reacting to the unending issue of ghost names on the government’s payroll at a news conference in Accra yesterday, Bampoe-Addo revealed that he, together with other top CLOGSAG executives have seen their names in the ghost payroll and asked sarcastically “are we ghosts?”
“Sectional heads are supposed to validate every government worker monthly before the salaries are released. They continue to tell us that there are ghost names yet nobody has been held culpable or prosecuted for his or her actions.”
“We all went for our bio data to be captured yet they are saying that there are still ghost names. It means that those running the software are milking the state.”
He said that one of the controls prior to the preparation of vouchers was the validation of the names on the pay voucher saying “what is intriguing about the ESVP is the never-ending control of the public service data and information.”
According to the CLOGSAG boss, “It has been the practice since IPPD 1 in the 1990s to IPPD 3 initiated and terminated in 2016 that that consultant’s software is installed on servers of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department,” adding “these servers are housed at the “Controller and Accountant General’s Department.”
“However, we stand to be corrected, the Controller and Accountant General server on ESPV has been placed at the services of the company running the ESPV and housed at the company’s premises,” and wondered what made a private company host data/information on public servants.
CLOGSAG Boss said the linkage of public sector pay system with SSNIT Biometric Data needs further explanation and described the situation as “public sector payroll games.”
They called on the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to investigate the situation and bring the ghost names issue to bed.
By William Yaw Owusu