The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) has stated that after the payroll discrepancies are corrected, the Government will save GH36.1 million cedis.
The report claimed that the irregularities could be fixed and urged everyone to help clean up the payroll.
This was stated by Mr. Benjamin Arthur, Chief Executive of FWSC, on Monday in Accra following the Commission’s nationwide Payroll Monitoring Exercise, which began on April 3, 2023.
As of August 2023, he claimed that 5,759 staff from 17 universities had been included in the program.
The Payroll Monitoring Exercise seeks to sanitize the Public Sector Payroll by identifying and removing any current fraud and anomalies on the payroll.
To ensure that only valid pay and benefits are delivered to deserving recipients, this is done.
Phase one of the preparatory exercise involved 17 educational institutions and agencies in the Greater Accra Region.
The National Accreditation Board, National Council for Tertiary Education, Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Commission for Civic Education are a few of these.
The National Service Secretariat, the Ghana Library Authority, the University of Professional Studies, the Ghana Institute of Languages, and the Ghana Communication Technology University are further organizations.
Several irregularities were found throughout the exercise, Mr. Arthur stated.
He said some employees continued to change their date of births leading to cases where one person had “different dates of birth—one on the payroll, one on their management data, one communicated by the individual himself or herself and another one from SSNIT”.
According to him, some validation officers were being transferred while still validating for workers in their previous districts.
The Chief Executive further stated that some people who had official housing continued to get housing benefits.
He claimed that a lot of times, vehicle maintenance allowances were discovered on the payroll when they shouldn’t have been.
He also expressed concern about certain employees who were receiving vehicle maintenance benefits while still using company vehicles.
He urged the administration of institutions in the public sector to act right away to fix all of those inconsistencies.
The overall wage bill of employees on the payrolls of Single Spine and the Controller and Accountant General decreased steadily from April to August, according to Mr. Arthur, despite a rise in the number of employees during that time.
He ascribed some of that to the Commission’s monitoring effort.
He praised the administration of other institutions, the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department for their cooperation.
“We use this occasion to say that all the collaborating institutions have helped, and they should keep on collaborating.”
Mr. Arthur stated that the Greater Accra and Western Regions would begin the second phase of the exercise on October 17 with assistance from the Local Government Services.
Exercises for verification would be conducted after that, he said.
In order to maintain equity and fairness for everyone, Madam Baaba Anquandah, Director, Salary Administration, FWSC, emphasized that the monitoring exercise was not intended to be a witch-hunting exercise.