Duffuor Backs SOFTribe's Akatua

Former Minister of Finance, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor has expressed shock at the decision by the Controller & Accountant General's Department (CAGD) and the Finance Ministry to drop 'Akatua', a payroll software developed by SOFTribe, a Ghanaian IT company.

There is an on-going media tussle over the efficiency of the software after the Controller & Accountant General Department blamed SOFTribe's 'Akatua' software for revelations about ghost names in the public payroll system.

IMANI Ghana accused the department of supervising a bloated public payroll system.

The CAGD said flaws in SOFTribe's 'Akatua' software contributed to the bloating of the payroll system.

In defending its product,  SOFTribe released some letters  exchanged between the two institutions to the public, of which some were signed by Dr. Duffuor.

The Controller & Accountant General has however  threatened to sue SOFTribe  for releasing the documents.

But speaking on Wednesday in Accra, the former minister argued that he cannot understand the brouhaha over the 'Akatua' software because the CAGD rated it as a first-class software when it was first introduced.

'When we came to government in 2009, the Controller & Accountant General had already procured this software 'Akatua' and the operators were SOFTribe company. We came to meet what the controller had done with them and the fact that the controller had even certified the efficiency of this particular software,' he said.

'Indeed, we also gave them to work on the pension and it was done satisfactorily, so I do not see any difficulty or any weaknesses in the Akatua software. So between me and the late president [John Atta Mills] we decided that they should be given the chance to do even more to help the IIPD2 to move the whole thing forward. In fact the IIPD3 was procured to be a backup product. So when we asked them to do more we thought it will help IPPD2 to it frontier forward.'

He, however, called for calm, saying 'we should not fight, we should look for a product that will help us,  if it's SOFTribe, let them do it, if they cannot then we can change them.'

Meanwhile, chairman of SOFTribe, Chinery Hesse on Tuesday insisted that  the company was not fighting government .

He explained that releasing such letters was a way of defending their integrity.