Osei Assibey Antwi
Former officers of the National Service Authority (NSA) have denied report of wrongdoing during their time at the authority, resulting in ‘ghost names’ on the payroll withdrawing monies for no work done.
Former Director-General of the NSA, Osei Assibey Antwi, as well as former Executive Director, Mustapha Ussif, in a statement argued that the claim by The Fourth Estate, “is laden with a misapprehension of the enrolment, verification and payment processes of the National Service Authority.
They also accused The Fourth Estate of selective omission of information, calculated to achieve contrived conclusions of imputing wrongdoing to former officers.
A statement issued by the former officers pointed out that the NSA operates multiple enrolment cycles, especially for nursing and teacher trainees, figures which were allegedly omitted in The Fourth Estate’s analysis, leading to an erroneous conclusion that there were ‘ghost names’ on the payroll.
The statement indicated that “The Fourth Estate relies on the above disparity to claim that the NSA payroll has been padded with “Ghosts” because monies allocated by Parliament exceed verified postings. Instructively, submissions of personnel list to Parliament for budgetary purposes are based on the total personnel posted by the Authority. However, in practice, not all persons posted end up on the payroll owing to varying reasons, including failing verification and failure to show up for the service.”
The statement emphasised that payment is only done following stringent verification processes and only personnel who pass the verification process are paid through the GhiPPS System, a Bank of Ghana subsidiary system.
“Even then, the payment is only made after monthly validations that confirm that personnel are at their respective postings. Any surplus sums after payments by GhiPPS are left in the Authority’s account for subsequent use. The publication by Fourth Estate is therefore false in suggesting simply because monies allocated by Parliament exceed verified postings, some “ghosts” are drawing pay,” the statement said.
On the allegation of the NSA system being full of people who are overaged, bear foreign pictures and wrong IDs, the statement clarified that all entries are cross-referenced and applicants are made to undergo in-person verification and “any personnel failing verification remains in the system under the banned, on hold or pending category, but becomes ineligible to be paid, hence does not draw from the payroll.”
The statement said it is therefore, shocking that The Fourth Estate would rely on these entry data without ascertaining from GhiPPS (the paying entity), the actual number of personnel paid per year and whether any of these persons with such inconsistent information actually received allowances from the NSA.
“This betrays the malicious intent of the purported investigation by the Fourth Estate, as merely calculated to hurriedly publish a sensational story to smear former officers, rather than diligently establish the facts as expected of a decent media house.”
The statement added that the former officers welcome President John Dramani Mahama’s directive for an investigation, as they are certain the investigation will reveal that the true state of affairs on the matters published are contrary to the contrived allegations by The Fourth Estate.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak