NADMO staff arrested for withdrawing salary after abandoning post

Alhassan Seidu Mahama, a Savelugu National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) employee, has been arrested for drawing Ghc35,000 as salary after resigning from his post.

According to NADMO management, the employee continued to be paid even after leaving the job, which was criminal.

Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to answer questions about infractions in the 2018 Auditor General’s Report, Nana Agyemang Prempeh, Director-General for NADMO, revealed that the arrest was carried out after all efforts to get the former staff to refund the money proved futile.

“Upon receipt of this report and the failure of our district directors to take action, we placed an embargo on two of our former district directors’ salaries so that if we don’t get Mr Alhassan, we’ll ask them to pay for the amount. We followed it up with a letter to the Director-General of C.I.D, and I’m happy to announce to the committee that last Saturday, he was arrested. He’s written his statement, the police service has called NADMO to provide them with some information, and this week he’ll be taken to court. So that is the action we’ve taken.” he said.

Meanwhile, the suspect has been granted bail.

After thorough deliberation, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) gave Nana Agyemang Prempeh two weeks to retrieve the money and report back to the committee.

Payroll fraud has been a perennial problem as the government spends over 60% of revenue on emoluments stifling infrastructural development.

The Auditor-General’s Department has also expressed worry over what it said was 45% of the country’s revenue being spent on 600,000 workers on the government’s payroll.

The 2018 Auditor General’s Report revealed that 12,536 potential ‘ghost’ employees were on the government’s payroll.

The heads or management of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had evidence to confirm that 1,195 were at post, while 3,518 were confirmed not at post.

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

The report said the management of the MDAs could, however, not provide any evidence to vouch for the existence of 7,823 of the employees.

History of payroll fraud

Authorities have made several attempts to deal with the matter with the Auditor General’s Department indicating that it will surcharge officials of MDAs who fail to ensure a clean payroll.

The government lost about GH¢564.2 million, which was reported in early 2020, with the Auditor-General insisting that supervising heads of institutions would be made to refund the monies.

2017

In April 2017, about 27,000 ghost names were removed, according to the Finance Ministry. It was after the completion of a SSNIT biometric enrolment exercise.

As recent as April 2017, the Finance Ministry announced it had removed close to 27,000 names from the payroll at the end of a SSNIT biometric enrolment exercise. Again, a little over 23,000 names were suspended from the payroll as the individuals could not be accounted for in a nationwide headcount conducted by the Finance Ministry.

These two actions alone, the Ministry disclosed, had saved the country over 250million Ghana cedis in 2017 alone; with a monthly savings of about 35million Ghana cedis.

The Ministry disclosed that these two actions alone had saved the country over 250million Ghana cedis in 2017 alone.

2016

Former Finance Minister Seth Terkper that an amount of GHC111.2 million was saved after non-existing names of about 6,000 people were cleared from the government’s payroll four years ago.

This was after the government undertook a nine-month cleanup exercise from January to September 2015.

2014

The situation was not different in 2014 When the Controller and Accountant General’s Department had to expunge 3,179 ghost names from the payroll. In that year, the Education Ministry alone had also to eliminate 2,913 ghosts from its books.

2012

A project was initiated by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP) in February 2011 to clear ghost names from the government’s payroll. 34,000 illegal names on the pensioners’ payroll in seven regions at the time.

2009

The Auditor General’s Report for that year revealed that Ghana lost some GH¢2,485,697,863, representing 90.3 per cent of financial malfeasance, to ghost names on the payroll of the country’s foreign missions alone.

2001

A task force set up by the Minister of Education in 2001 to exorcise a targeted 30,000 ghost names from the payroll of the Ghana Education Service (GES) expunged 10,000 names. Based on the 1998 Auditor-General’s Report, it was estimated that for every GH¢10 paid in wages, salaries and allowances in 1998, about 60Gp (or six per cent) was an unauthorised payment.