President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe has ascribed the fraud in the governments payroll system to what he describes as “institutional inertia.”
“There is an institutional inertia preventing world class auditing of the payroll system,” he insisted.
Franklin Cudjoe has however threatened to expose the Controller and Accountant Generals Department over an incriminating document he has intercepted about payroll system.
He said the document showed that the country lost huge sums of money through the system in a manner, which was “orchestrated and well planned,” while assuring that “I will be releasing them very soon.”
According to him, the document has some startling revelations is from an international firm, which audited the payroll system.
[contextly_sidebar id=”dEQ6GAMrn8rvsbnJRfUPYS5DdKze1D6I”]The government has been struggling to clean the payroll system, which is believed to contain “ghost names.”
President John Dramani Mahama recently inaugurated a four member Ministerial Committee to oversee the implementation of an improved Payroll Management system.
“The report I intercepted from an international audit firm showed that this payroll thing we are doing we are joking. Nothing substantial will work,” Franklin Cudjoe insisted.
Speaking on Citi Fm’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue, Franklin Cudjoe said “as recent as yesterday [Friday], some reports I have intercepted has given me cause to believe that the Controller and Accountant General is the number one, in fact worst and most corrupt institution in the country.”
He opined that if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is serious about helping Ghana out of its economic woes, there was the need to “allow a third party to get into the payroll and clean it up otherwise we will continue experiencing payroll fraud.”
“I am going to write to the IMF and tell them that before you do a deal with this country the payroll that we have in this country, outsource it fully. Don’t give controller even one percent of the payroll because that is where they manufacture figures into the payroll.”
According to him should such loopholes in the payroll system be rectified, the government wouldn’t have to seek a bailout because “Ghana has a lot of money, we don’t even need an IMF.”
In a related development, IMANI Ghana in a recent report ranked the Controller and Accountant Generals Department as one of the worse performing public institutions in the country.
The list dubbed “top worst performers,” which was topped by the Chief of Staff, also has the National Service Secretariat, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Auditor-General, the Bank of Ghana, the Sports Ministry, the National Pensions Regulatory Authority and the Social Security and National Insurance Trust.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana