600 government workers aged between 60 - 110 years

Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr. Kwabena Duffour

Over 600 people on the government payroll, with ages ranging between 60 and 110, continue to draw salaries though they are above the statutory employment age, the report of the Auditor-General on the Public Account of Ghana (Consolidated Fund) for the year ended December 31, 2010 has revealed.

They are mainly found on the payrolls of the Ghana Education Service and the Ghana Health Service.

The report cited specific cases of Patricia Kuseo, of Saint Joseph Clinic/Maternity at Chamba, Donatha S.R. Kanmwaa of West Gonja Hospital at Damongo, Siebebale also of West Gonja Hospital, and Felicitas Ansoayiri of the Jirapa Catholic Hospital who are aged 110, bear the same birth dates of 02/01/ 1900 and hired on the same date 01/08/1998.

Also cited are Seth Fosu of the Onwane, Presby Primary School, aged 107, date of birth was given as 17/10/1903) hired on 11/10/2003, Bugba Yakubu of Mamprusi East District Education Office, newly trained teacher whose date of birth was given as 13/1 0/1904 and was hired on 01/10/2004.

The audited report, signed by the Auditor-General, Richard Quartey, also discovered that some of the beneficiaries on the payroll had ages ranging between six and 15 years, well below the statutory employment age.

Mr. Quartey noted in the report that the failure of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Database (IPPD) control system to detect and delete the names of the unqualified employees “in my view is a significant deficiency which can lead to wrongful payment of salaries.”

The report said the Controller and Accountant General's response to a management query noted that anomalies detected were as result of data entry errors explaining that the office had activated the functionalities on the IPPD payroll system which would automatically reject dates of birth not within the defined age limit.

It said the record of employees with wrong date of births had been generated and forwarded to the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies, as well as Metropolitan, and Municipal, District Assemblies to enable them to correct the errors for the CAGD to update the payroll.

In the morning, the motion in Parliament on November 16, for the approval of the 2012 budget statement, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr. Kwabena Duffour said; “as part of fiscal consolidation policy, government is undertaking a biometric registration of all pensioners and active employees on government payroll. The resultant database would be used for all future payments of wages, salaries and pensions in the public sector.”

Dr. Duffuor said the exercise which had been completed in the Eastern, Volta, Central, Western and Greater Accra regions, indicated that 29,563 representing 41 per cent of all pensioners could not be accounted for and could be described as ghost or non-existing names.

He said the second stage of the exercise would cover biometric registration of the payroll of active employees in sub-vented agencies followed by the third phase which would cover 450,662 active employees on the mechanised payroll.