About 6,000 documents submitted by teachers for the validation and processing of their salary arrears have been rejected because they were found to be duplicates.
Others teachers were also found to have backdated their documents according to the Auditor General’s Department.
[contextly_sidebar id=”PWn2D90fLaTgHP8A7WMzBvorDZlT9QRu”]The Auditor General’s Department and the Controller and Account General’s Department, are currently validating documents submitted by the three teacher unions for the payment of the over two years salary arrears, and some allowances also in arrears.
Speaking to Citi News yesterday [Sunday], the Director of Payroll at the Auditor General’s Department, Ben Tandoh, explained that backdating was indeed fraudulent because it is an attempt to fleece Government of unearned salary.
“Backdating is fraudulent because it has an element of unearned salary and it is not only unearned salary, we must remember that Government pays 13 percent as employee’s contribution to the social security on your behalf.”
Mr. Tandoh revealed that they had identified 6,000 duplicate payments saying, “GES gave us 34,000 plus but when we had the actual hard copies it is about 36, 000 and we have been able to flush out 6000 which are duplicates.
According to Mr. Tandoh, his outfit will be passing on their findings to the Ministry of Finance and recommend that the culprits be punished.
“Those who are found culpable will be held responsible. It is for minister of finance to carry out the recommendation and I’m sure they are going to be punished,” he stated.
Why the need for validation?
The Ghana Education Service (GES) had accused some teachers of faking their documents hence delay in payments.
According to the GES, out of 14,575 input forms that were initially submitted by teachers for processing and payment, only 6,268 were found to be attached with genuine supporting documents.
The teacher unions responded by saying they were not to blame if some of the teachers have fake certificates and that the GES, which recruits teachers, should be blamed.
Some teacher groups also called for the arrest of the GES Director General Jacob Kor, for supervising the recruitment of these teachers if that was indeed the case.
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By Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana