Let’s Be More Prudent And Fair In Our Attempts To Recover Unearned Salaries?

Introduction
An unearned salary is a salary that is paid to a person who did not work for it. Once the person did not work for it, he or she did not earn the salary. Salaries must be earned through work activities and not just paid for work not done. People who take unearned salaries are often termed as “ghosts” on the public sector payroll. These people may be workers who died, retired, vacated post, resigned, took leave without pay or people who are not public sector employees at all.

The ghost name menace has engaged national attention over the years with several headcounts done to get rid of the ghosts but still it is said that some ghosts exist on the various government payrolls.

Almost every year, the Ghana Audit Service brings some of those unearned salaries to the attention of Parliament and for that matter the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is always chaired by a minority MP. Currently, Hon. James Klutse Avedzi (NDC MP) whose picture appears in this article chairs the PAC.

Over the years, government through the Auditor-General and the PAC has used the punitive approach of surcharge in getting the unearned salaries recovered. Quite recently, the Auditor-General even surcharged departmental heads or managers of public organizations whose employees took unearned salaries. Methinks that surcharging the managers for the unearned salaries paid to their staff seek to demonstrate that they did not do their work well. However, payment of unearned salaries goes beyond the duty of managers of the various MDAs and MMDAs. As such, the PAC and Auditor-General should not make the managers as scapegoats or people who must be solely responsible for refund of the unearned salaries paid to the “ghosts”. My reasons for this assertion unfold with recommendations.

Electronic Salary Payment Voucher
The Controller and Accountant General has put in place an Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (ESPV) platform, which is used in paying salaries to public servants since 2014. However, the ESPV platform has some challenges that have not been addressed and the Auditor –General must be concerned more with that, than surcharging managers unethically. The chief duty of the managers in running the ESPV platform is to validate the salaries on their payrolls monthly before the CAGD pays. However, there are at times that the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) pays the salaries without the managers validating them. This happens when the ESPV software develops a problem and time is of essence so only the CAGD can validate the salaries for that month. Under this circumstance, unearned salaries may be paid and this cannot be said to be the result of a negligent act of the managers.

In addition, during salary validations, managers have three (3) windows or parameters namely approve, unknown and approve- with- issue. The approve-with-issue parameter helps the validators to discontinue payment of the unearned salaries or to reduce the salaries. On several occasions however, managers discontinued payments yet the CAGD continued to run the salaries on the payrolls and sometimes managers mistakenly validate such salaries. The public sector payroll is currently run partly electronic and partly manual such that printed forms called IPPD forms are still used to place new entrants on the payrolls, and to cause salary transfers.

In capturing the unearned salaries during audit, the Ghana Audit Service staff only pick the gross salaries from the printed ESPVs, forgetting that income taxes are deducted by the CAGD before net salaries are credited to individual employee accounts. This practice therefore overstates the unearned salaries.

Within the ESPV dispensation, managers no longer have access to employee pay-slips hence it is difficult for both the managers and the auditors to tell the actual amount of the unearned salaries paid. The auditors tend to pick the entire gross salary as unearned, which is wrong because CAGD does not credit income tax components of the salaries to any employee. Those components are retained in the Consolidated Fund. To ask the employee to refund the unearned salary in gross is therefore unethical and to surcharge the managers and not surcharge CAGD for payment of the unearned salaries is equally unethical and a lazy way of recovering the monies.

Besides, the employee has relations and for that matter beneficiaries duly documented in his or her employment records who must also be made to be responsible for the unearned salaries. This may sound a dissenting view but the fact is that whether or not the employee died intestate, the managers are not part of the beneficiaries of his estates.

Recommendations
As indicated earlier, public sector employees have families and next of kin who are the beneficiaries of their estates even if they die testate (left a valid will before dying) or intestate (dying without a valid will). The managers of the public sector organizations in most cases are not the same as those relatives of the employees who are paid the unearned salaries. As such, the PAC and the Auditor-General should not leave such relations and be chasing only the managers for the unearned salaries.

On some occasions, those employees are not even within the jurisdiction hence the PAC itself must assist the managers of the organizations to engage the services of Interpol in getting the “ghosts” arrested.

In some cases, these managers are rather compelled to use huge sums of government money to recover small amounts of unearned salaries. For example, managers in Takwa or Wa which is far from Accra but are invited to meet the PAC in Accra over unearned salary of about GHC3,000.00 may end up using government fuel, pay officially for accommodation in Accra and take perdiem for the trip. Granted that they spent about GHC6,000.00 in attempt to recover a lesser amount, is it prudent doing so? I would rather the District/Municipal/Metropolitan Assemblies or the courts in the regions are authorized to oversee the recovery of such unearned salaries.

Another suggestion is that the public servants usually contribute to Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT). Instead of surcharging managers whenever their workers are paid unearned salaries, the PAC should rather direct SSNIT to deduct the amount involved from their benefits or contributions.

The punitive recovery method of surcharge against the managers has not helped the country that much. Problems must not be solved using cosmetic measures to scratch the surface of the root causes. The germane factors must be tackled appropriately if indeed we want a lasting panacea.

The paradox of the issue however is that the PAC is not able to chase political leaders involved in huge corruption with financial loss to the state. They rather chase monies as small as GHC600.00 or GHC2000.00 paid to someone who did not work for it. I agree that little drops of water makes a mighty ocean, but what is good for the goose is equally good for the gander. As such, the PAC and Auditor-General must chase the big monies even as they chase the small ones.

I want to further recommend that the CAGD must be giving the managers, a report of actual salaries paid to employees. It should not also be out of place when salary payment is decentralized to the various MDAs and MMDAs. Again, salary payments must not necessarily be done monthly; they can be done fortnightly as well.

Until then, the problem of unearned salaries will continue to be an issue. I hope this article gets to the attention of the PAC members and I hope if it does, the recommendations will be attractive to them.

~Asante Sana ~
Author: Philip Afeti Korto.
Email: [email protected]