Vice President, Dr Bawumia says the government has removed all ghost names from the public payroll system.

His announcement comes two months after the Controller and Accountant General, Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem made a similar declaration.

Mr. Kwaning-Bosompem who was speaking at the 2024 Controller and Accountant General’s Department Annual Conference in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region said “Payroll database has been an active database all these years.

"What it means is that we’ve gone through a process of putting intervention in place to make sure the payroll database is credible and that there would not be any instance where we’ll find an unauthorised person existing on the payroll and benefiting from the government’s resources.”

Confirming this at the Chief Justice’s forum in Accra, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia touted the contribution of the Ghana Card system in the eradication of ghost names from the payroll, and how much the move saved the country.

"I have also seen through digitalisation that you can deal with corruption. We have now eliminated ghost workers at the Controller and Accountant General's office just by using the Ghana Card because the ghosts don't have fingerprints.

"This has saved SSNIT four hundred and eighty million Ghana cedis by eliminating twenty-nine thousand ghost pensioners.

"... and at the National Service (Secretariat) by eliminating forty-four thousand workers, we have saved over three hundred and fifty-six million Ghana cedis. This is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.

The 2024 flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) also used the platform to urge Ghanaians to work with the judiciary in the delivery of justice.

"I encourage all the key players in the justice delivery value chain and indeed all of us to give every support that we can to support this vision of the Chief Justice so she can deliver on their goals and targets to the benefit of our country. As a government, we shall continue to do more," he stressed.

Background

In January 2024, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia announced the rollout of a new policy by the government to streamline its payroll.

The new policy would ensure that all government workers link their Ghana Card details to the payroll.

Speaking at the launch of the National Mechanised Payroll Database of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department in Accra, Dr Bawumia said the government’s payroll would be purged of ghost names soon.

“This linkage between the NIA database and the government payroll will significantly contribute to eliminating the incidence of ghost names on the government of Ghana’s mechanised payroll system, which has persisted for some time,” Dr Bawumia stated.