5 major highlights from the Auditor General's 'ghost names' report

The report revealed that ghost names on public sector payroll in 21 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have cost the state GH¢467,634,792.

The periodic audit exercise, was carried out in 2018, in accordance with Section 16 of the Audit Service Act, 2000 (Act 584).

These are the major highlights of the findings in the report:

1 . According to the report, the various MDAs include, ministries of Education, Finance, Energy, Defence, Communications, Information, Health, the Interior, Railway Development and Foreign Affairs.

The others are, Local Government and Rural Development, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Employment and Labour Relations, Food and Agriculture, Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Lands and Natural Resources and Gender, Children and Social Protection, Roads and Highways, Transport, Sanitation and Water Resources and Justice and Attorney-General.

And the Agencies are the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the Electoral Commission, the Judicial Service and the Local Government Service.

2 . It also revealed that out of 12,536 potential ‘ghost’ employees, the heads or management of the MDAs had evidence to confirm that 1,195 were at post, while 3,518 were confirmed not at post.

3 . The 3,518 workers who were confirmed not at post were, among other things, deceased, on interdiction, leave of absence, had resigned, were suspended or had vacated post.

4 . Employees who had gone past the retirement age were still on the payroll because the payroll system had not been properly configured to terminate automatically.

It indicated that the names of 84 employees who had attained the statutory retirement age and had no contract extension were still on the payroll.

5 . A total of 7,407 out of the 19,203 suspicious certificates were confirmed to be genuine and 62 found to be fake. 11,734 certificates were not able to be confirmed.