An Open Letter to the Auditor-General of Ghana: Your declaration of health workers at post as ghost names is problematic and can lead to unnecessary judgement debts

Mr. Johnson Akuamoah Asiedu, Auditor-General of Ghana, I write to draw your attention to this unfortunate situation encapsulated in the caption above. It is my ardent hope that this open letter will not only come to your attention but also that when it does, you will ensure that the challenge is addressed from its root cause (s) so that it does not recur.

Mr. Johnson Akuamoah Asiedu, one of the painful things that happens to an employee is for him or her to work but he or she will not receive salary. It is sad to indicate that this is exactly what you have done to some health workers through your officers who carried out a head count exercise recently.

Pursuant to the said exercise, even some frontline health workers who have been at post attending to patients have been denied salaries for about two months now. Some of these health workers went through the head count yet they are still treated as ghost names and they do not receive salaries.

Equally, your officers received adequate and accurate evidence that some of the staff were on approved annual leaves and they had travelled far away at the time of the head count exercise yet your officers still declared them ghosts and blocked their salaries.

The new development is that some of these staff who no longer receive salaries pursuant to the head count exercise, keep abandoning duties and chasing officers of the Audit Service and Controller and Accountant-General’s Department to have their heads counted again. Painfully, they remain unpaid because the salary system reads against their names, Audit Service Stoppages.

It is quite unfortunate, Auditor-General, that failure of your officers to listen and do due diligence during the recent head count exercise has led to many health workers not being paid even though they are at post attending to patients. I do not think whatsoever that this development operates in national interest and it may even lead to preventable deaths at the public hospitals and preventable judgment debts against the Government of Ghana when a legal action is brought against you and the Attorney-General.

It should not be lost on you, sir, that per Article 187 (9) of the Constitution, 1992, “A person aggrieved by a disallowance or surcharge made by the Auditor-General may appeal to the High Court.” It should equally be noted by you and your officers persistently that in the two cases of New Patriotic Party v President Rawlings & Another [1993-94] GLR 193-220, and Martin Alamisi Amidu v John Agyekum Kufuor, The Attorney General, Jake Obetsebi -Lamptey, Elizabeth Ohene and Joshua Hamidu [25/04/2001) Civil Motion No. 8/2001, the Supreme Court of Ghana decided poignantly on grounds of rule of law and constitutional supremacy that not even the most powerful person in the country, H.E. the President is above the Constitution, 1992, and let me add that let alone the Auditor-General.

We have equally heard that a directive has just been given at a short notice that public sector employees including health workers who had unfortunately been declared ghosts on the payrolls by your officers, have only two days, 15^th and 16^th September 2025 to go through the exercise again or else they risk not being paid again this month.

It will interest you to note, Mr. Auditor-General, that some of these employees were at post, helped your head count teams and even provided refreshments for them for the same exercise yet the names of these employees have erroneously been captured by your officers as ghost names for which reason some are not being paid whereas others risk not being paid this September. If a head count exercise meant to clean the public payroll ends up witch-hunting even employees at post, then how valid, accurate and fair is the outcome of such an exercise? Said differently, of what importance is a head count exercise whose consequences make the Audit Service cry wolf even when a wolf-like domestic dog is not in sight?

To this end, I recommend to you honestly and unreservedly that you should reconsider your tight deadlines for a head recount for the affected public sector employees if indeed the Audit Service believes in rule of law and natural justice and the ramifications for going contrary to those. Your head count teams could do better than what we are experiencing at the moment. Just imagine that a frontline health worker who is scheduled to attend to an emergency patient is running around chasing your head count team and the patient dies as a result? Can we recover that precious life?

Please act swiftly on this with a better deadline. ~Asante Sana~

Philip Afeti Korto
Hospital Administrator
[email protected]