GHC1.1m salaries paid to 3 ghost Ministry of Finance workers recovered – Deputy Minister

The Auditor General’s report for the year 2021 has revealed that the Ministry of Finance paid a total amount of GH¢1,112,896.00 as salaries to three people whose records could not be found as employees of the ministry.

According to the Auditor General, the payment was contrary to Regulation 86 of the Public Financial Management Regulations, 2019 (L.I. 2378).

The names of the said individuals who received the payments were given by the Auditor General as: Allotey Eamon James, Kwakye Nana Yaw Asiedu, and Adam Habibu.

But reacting to media reports on the matter, John Kumah has noted that the said amount has since been recovered.

“Kindly note that the funds paid were recovered when the attention of the Ministry was drawn to this anomaly,” John Kumah said.

Explaining the circumstances leading to the recipients of the payment being tagged as ghosts, which he described as an anomaly, the deputy minister said the situation was due to a payroll misunderstanding.

“The three ghost names are personnel seconded from GRA, for whom there was some misunderstanding about which payroll they belonged for the period of the secondment. The amounts paid have been recovered from the GRA as indicated and the ministry will in due time share more details,” he wrote.

The Auditor General’s report noted that the three were paid in total amounts of GH¢206,433.00, GH¢535,738.80 and GH¢370,724.16 as gross salaries for 12 months in the case of the person and 24 months in the case of the other two.

“We noted that, three persons were paid a total of GH¢1,112,895.96 as salaries for the period January 2020 to December 2021, but we could not trace their personal files and names on the nominal roll of the Ministry,” the report said.

As part of its report, the Auditor General recommended that, “the amount of GH¢1,112,895.96 should be recovered from the Chief Director and the payroll validators of MoF.”

As referenced by the Auditor General in his report, Regulation 86 of the Public Management Regulations, 2019 (L. I. 2378) states that “a Principal Spending Officer of a covered entity shall ensure that only the names of personnel who are eligible to receive payment for work done are kept on the payment voucher and keep records of the nominal roll of the covered entity in a manner that ensures that the correct amount of emolument is paid.”

But in the argument of the deputy minister of finance, there is a need for the Auditor General’s Office to update its reports with recoveries on the various infractions it captures.

“This is why I always insist that the Auditors General report must also have an update on recoveries being made,” the deputy minister said.

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