NPP’s accusation that 17% of all ghost names on public sector payroll are party cadres has been rubbished by government as a new low in irresponsible opposition politics.

Information Minister Omane Boamah has expressed disappointment that the largest opposition party in Ghana could make a claim without any evidence.

The NPP’s accusation formed part of a 31-page response to the 2015 budget presented in Parliament two months and some odd days ago.

Among other claims of mismanagement by government, the Minority leader Osei-Kyei Mensah Bonsu charges that Ghanaians are being made to “pay dearly for the economic mismanagement and corruption in this country”.

Joining in listing more allegations, former Deputy Finance Minister, Professor George Gyan Baffour alleged in an interview with Joy News’ Parliamentary correspondent, Elton John Brobbey that there are party cadres being paid huge sums of money monthly for doing nothing.

Gyan Baffour who is the NPP Minority ranking member on the Trade and Industry Committee, insisted that “They [NDC] claim that they are not hiring but they are hiring behind everybody, bring in their own party workers, therefore increasing the wage bill.”

“When the economy grows, the revenue grows in tandem and the economy has more than doubled so the wages that you are using [notwithstanding introduction of SSS] should not go that high”, he added.

He also alleged that “people who are hired today are being paid [for] the last one year. Some of them have backdated when they were hired and they are paying them arrears.”

The EU ambassador to Ghana, William Hanna on 16^th December, told Reuters "if we are paying for people in Ghana it has to be real teachers, real nurses, not ghost workers.

She continues "The government has to not just address it but deal with it, identify the ghost workers, take sanctions against those who are responsible, remove those names from the list, clean up the database and stop these leakages."

But the Information Minister noted that the EU claim was based on a condition, ‘If’. The reality, he said, was that Government had taken steps it believes are practical in “weeding out” ghost names.

He said there was an electronic salary payment voucher being implemented to sanitize the public payroll.

Complementing an electronic count of all government workers, Omane Boamah said, circulars have been sent to heads of various ministries, agencies and departments to do a headcount of the number of staff.

Finally, he said, letters have been circulated from the Controller and Account-General’s Department warning that public servants who do not have bank accounts will have their names deleted.

He described the removal of ghost names on the payroll as a “sacred duty”, and expressed surprise that the party had “sunk so low into infamy” with its latest allegation.

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