Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has emphasized the significance of requiring new public sector employees and staff to undergo a biometric identification process.

According to him, this measure would eliminate ghost names from the payroll and ensure that all those who receive salaries have earned them.

"Ghosts can not have fingerprints so once you require fingerprint. The ghosts will run away because they can not produce the fingerprints. That is the problem it creates for the ghosts," he said.

Speaking at a ceremony in Accra, he explained that this procedure will connect their National Identification Cards to the payroll, activating their names on the payroll system and streamlining the payment of salaries

"New entrants are required to undergo the biometric verification identification process to activate their information on the national payroll system to facilitate the monthly payment of salaries,” he said.

Dr Bawumia said this process was mandatory as it helped the government know the number of people on their payroll.

“The objective of the linkage that we have done, this historic linkage, is now to make it mandatory for the Ghanan Card to be used as a means of validation of newly recruited employees and also the re-verification of existing employees and pensioners on the government of Ghana mechanise payroll system,” he added on January 10, 2024.

• Read also: Public sector workers without Ghana Card risk being delisted on March 5

Meanwhile, the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompen has announced a stringent measure to delist public sector workers without Ghana Card numbers, freezing their salaries starting March 5, 2024.

"With the effect of March 24, this year, all employees without Ghana Card face the risk of being not paid on the government payroll," Mr Kwaning-Bosompen explained.