The director of Payroll at the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD), George Baah has rejected claims that they are the cause of delays in the payment salaries of public sector workers.
He instead dropped the blame at the door steps of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
[contextly_sidebar id=”KmUJ8Dz53W1uXKcoxPH7mx7wjMYQFQtm”]He explained that the MDAs fail to secure financial clearance for new employees before such persons are recruited.
“Applying for financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance is a process on its own because it takes time. So when they don’t have the financial clearance the MDAs still go ahead and employ people,” Mr Baah said on Eyewitness News on Wednesday.
The payroll Director further noted that because they operate a decentralized system the “GES head office has access to the payroll system where they can key in their data to generate staff numbers to enable them go to the Ministry of Finance to do biometric registration.”
“So the delay occurs, when they haven’t secured a financial clearance and yet they go ahead and employ,” he insisted.
He added that it takes six to 12 months to secure a financial clearance.
“You could just imagine the length and time for that employee to be placed on the mechanized payroll system.”
George Baah disclosed that a recent audit into the payroll processes showed that “before an employees record gets into the mechanized payroll system, it takes about 24 months.”
According to him, the audit further revealed that the data takes about six to twelve months from the district level to the head office.
He thus insisted that “the delay is not from the Controller but from the MDA level through to the head office.”
Mr Baah made the comments in relation to a number of public sector workers including junior doctors who are complaining that they have not bee paid for about 11 months.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana