Former DCE of Sekyere Afram Plains, Donkor Fuseini says he did not receive salaries paid in his name after he resigned from the Ghana Health Service in 2009.

Mr. Fuseini is among persons whose names have appeared in an audit report where salaries worth Ghc564 million were paid to 'ghost' workers at various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) but Mr. Fuseini said he never received any of the salaries.

According to him, he did not realize his name was still on the Ghana Health Service payroll where he resigned as a Field Technician and his salary was still being paid in his name until 2019.

“I was with Ghana Health Service before I went into politics, so I resigned from the Ghana Health Service as a Field Technician (FT) at the Sekyere Central District Directorate of Health Services and was made to resign in full in 2009.

"After resignation I refunded all the salaries that were paid to me from June to September when I was appointed as the NADMO Coordinator,” he told Evans Mensah on Newsnite.

He added that “since then no salaries come into my account and I started taking the NADMO salary until 2013 when I became a DCE.

"But in 2019, I found out that my name was still in the Ghana Health Service payroll and that I had been promoted to a Principal Field Technician without my knowledge.”

The Auditor General’s Department has detected that the public purse has lost an amount of ¢564.2 million to ‘ghost’ names on the payroll of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

These unaccounted for employees make up ¢467.6 million of the total unearned salaries.

The periodic audit exercise, which was carried out in 2018, in accordance with Section 16 of the Audit Service Act, 2000 (Act 584) revealed that 7,823 ‘ghost’ employees existed in 21 MDAs.

According to the report, the various MDAs include ministries of Education, Finance, Energy, Defence, Communications, Information, Health, the Interior, Railway Development, and Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Fuseini, whose name has appeared in the list of the Health Ministry has denied receipt of any such payments.

He, however, stated that he drew the attention of authorities in charge when he found out yet, nothing was done about it although the ministry promised to follow up on the matter.

"Somebody somehow was able to go through my promotion procedure so the salary I was taking as an FT was upgraded to a Principal FT and it kept coming until 2019 when I was alerted.

“So I quickly called the Ministry and found out why my name was still in their records. They said they were going to work on it but I also decided that since it's not coming into my account, I don’t have any issues," he added.

He said calls for prosecution of such persons should be critically looked at as the shocking reality will be that the monies never got to such persons.