The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta has directed that names of 26,589 public sector workers be removed from the payroll commencing April 2017 for failure to register on the new SSNIT biometric system. A statement from the Public Relations Unit of the Ministry of Finance said the affected workers had failed to register despite many opportunities to do so.
The Minister, in his presentation of the 2017 budget, announced Government’s commitment to clean the payroll.
To that effect, the Minister requested that the Controller and Accountant General on the 10th of February 2017 should inform all public servants on the Government of Ghana mechanised payroll system who had not registered on the new SSNIT biometric system to do so by the end of February 2017.
The notice further stated that commencing end of March 2017,salaries for un-enrolled workers, were to be suspended indefinitely or until the SSNIT re-enrollment was completed by the said workers. The February 28th, 2017 deadline was further extended to March 31st 2017 by the Minister of Finance.
This directive will as such now come into effect commencing with the end of April 2017 payroll. Consequently, those not registered with SSNIT, as directed shall be treated as “Ghost” going forward and shall as such be removed from the payroll for April 2017.
In a related development, the Minister has also directed the Controller and Accountant General to suspend the payment of pensions to some 23,029 people because they could not be accounted for in a nationwide head count which ended on the 22nd of October 2016.These two directives, resulting in the identification of close to 50, 000 “Ghost” names on the payroll and Pensions Registry were expected to save the country some GH35 million in payroll cost on a monthly basis or a total of over GHS250 million in 2017 alone.The statement said SSNIT was prepared to validate any affected pensioner, across the country, who availed themselves to be counted and validated going forward.
It said several mobile enrolment kits were on standby to cater for affected pensioners who may not be able to travel to their nearest SSNIT district offices to complete the validation process. The Minister called on all citizens to help protect the public purse as Government was commited to bringing “Ghana beyond Aid”. “Any real person whose name has been suspended can visit any of the SNNIT branches nationwide to be biometrically re-enrolled. SNNIT has set up enrolment desks within all their offices,” the statement added.
Source: GNA
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U call it wrong move I call good move, we always wsiiting for things to be done for us. I ve submitted it months ago n my ppa n bla bla bla all bu11sh1t excuses if u were underpaid that month would sit down n wait for your so called pp wateva..this is just the beginning u ain't see anything yet wait for da big one...nan1ama
wrong move, minister. u didn't find out how shabbily the exercise was carried out which led to too many gov. workers not able to register
Please it is not true that the affected workers have failed to register with ssnit for their biometric ssnit numbers.Some workers have forwarded these numbers to Accra several months ago and still their old ssnit numbers are still appearing on their payslips.What do you expect them to do again?, to go to Accra to do the inputting themselves?.Others have had their biometric ssnit numbers wrongly captured by their head office PPS.All efforts to get the necessary corrections to be done have failed thus making it difficult for ssnit to credit their contributions,I dont know why people in Accra fear decentralization. They want Accra to control every thing even though it is becoming konongo kaya for them,insertion of ssnit boimetric number too on payslip also has to go to Accra for a service personnel to input, i cant think far when we have more experienced staff of controller sitting in the regions, again i cant think far.
For all you know most workers have forwarded their biometric ssnit numbers to the personnel processing sections(PPS)of their various M D A,s in Accra for inputting only for these numbers to lie there unattended to,these 26,000 workers will suffer stoppage of their salaries through no fault of theirs.In this era of I C T why cant the controller and accountant general network its regional offices to the payroll machine in Accra to input these simple things, issues like insertion of ssnit numbers,change of bank,correction of wrong account number,change of management unit,etc can easily be done in the regions.What is so special about Accra such that every salary related input has to go there for inputting,some one in Tamale or Bolga or Wa who has been working for 20 years as a controller staff cannot do any inputting but the same controller staff who is barely 2 years on the job and finds him/herself in Controller headquarters can do inputting,is it about experience or ones location that determines competence, i pity the affected workers.They are not ghost,its just that someone in Accra is not up to the task.How can a ghost go through the payroll biometric registration to get his/her name on to the payroll,how can a ghost go to the bank every month to receive salary.There is definately some thing wrong somewhere.
This move should be applauded. Definitely, a few people will be caught in the cross hairs due to lack of transportation and other logistics, however in the long run, a lot of money will be saved. For those interested in the politics of this move: The NDC started work on this project as you note that October 2016 was mentioned in the article, Npp is continuing what was started. All for the good of the country.
Francis being an assemblyman doesn't mean you have ideas to govern a nation especially where he was an assemblyman. As for you ndc I don't understand your logic,you behave like Ghana is a jungle. Ghana is above your ndc thinking so stop being in politics for you don't understand that game.
Has this man declared his offshore accounts?
Good work done. Just keep_on doing the right thing not just for yourselves but for our nation Ghana. I salute the NPP government for their great courage
kanazoe, where u not in this country when some teachers who have fake documents where taken off the pay roll? if president mahama who raised up from an assemblyman to president is an incompetent, then what name will give to ur Faaatheeeer who have done nothing with his life...
Incompetent John Mahama and his corrupt NDC were just paying money to ghosts... Good job finance minister. Serious men at work