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An unimpeachable source at the Controller & Accountant-General Department�s who spoke to The New Crusading GUIDE yesterday, in reaction to a press release issued by the Ministry of Information, has expressed surprise that the Minister of Information and Media Relations, Mr. Mahama Ayariga, could create the impression that... ...the �non-payment� of salaries of Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Presidential Staffers, etc., appointed by President John Mahama since January 2013, is evidence of some sacrifice and restraint on the part of those appointees induced by Government policy. �The �non-payment� or better put, the �delay� in payment of the salaries of that category of presidential appointees, is a normal characteristic of the kind of system we have operated in this country over the years. The Minister of Information�s statement and pronouncements are misleading because there is a regime of procedures we follow to enable us activate the payment of salaries to these appointees, and that has absolutely nothing to do with sacrifice and self restraint on the part of those appointees�, intimated our source at the Controller & Accountant-General Department. �When was the first batch of Ministers sworn in and when did they fill the �personnel forms� to the Controller & Accountant-General for processing and keying into the payment system as first appointees? Most of these appointees were vetted by the Parliamentary Appointments Committee and subsequently approved by the whole House in late February and mid-March, and so the processes to effectively capture them on the Government pay-roll for purposes of payment of their salaries would necessarily take sometime before actual payment of their salaries could take place�, emphasised our source. He pointed out that it was only after the Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Presidential Staffers or Aides are sworn into office by the President that the �Castle Accounts� (in this case, �Flagstaff Accounts�), will provide the appointees with the appropriate or relevant �personnel forms� for them (Presidential Appointees) to fill in with their details such as bank accounts, etc., after which these details would be forwarded to the Controller & Accountant-General to enable the latter undertake the necessary processing and documentation as required by the relevant financial regulations, so as to facilitate payment of salaries of the newly sworn-in appointees when payment is deemed due. �Against this backdrop, it is obvious that the �non-payment� or �delay in payment� of the salaries of the presidential appointees referred to by the Minister of Information and Media Relations, cannot be because of a conscious policy of sacrifice, selflessness and self-restraint. That interpretation is not only misleading but dishonest�, stressed our source. The preceding submissions made by our highly-placed source at the Controller & Accountant-General Department, were authenticated by two former top Government functionaries who also spoke to The New Crusading GUIDE on condition of strict confidentiality. A former Presidential Advisor to President Mills told our News Desk that �I have just checked my bank statement and it took four (4) months for my first salary to go into my bank account in 2009. The arrears came quite later. And that was not due to any conscious policy of sacrifice, selflessness and self-restraint. It was a reflection of the nature of the system, and that was what it was during the Rawlings era (1993-2001). Why can�t we just tell the truth? Why engage in this kind of unsustainable spinning that takes us nowhere?� The former Presidential Advisor wondered whether the fact that there are nurses still on student allowances two years after beginning work, is part of the policy of sacrifice and selflessness. He said teachers, after starting to teach after college, suffer the same experience. �The fundamental right of a citizen is respect of his intelligence by the Government he/she votes into power. If �citizen voters� are without common sense and are foolish then the Government they vote into power may pay back with deceit and insults like the misleading and dishonest press statement issued by the Ministry of Information & Media Relations. No Government should spin with the citizen voters� intelligence�, lamented the former Presidential Advisor. Meanwhile, a former top Minister in the Kufuor Administration from 2005 to 2009 corroborated what the Mills� Presidential Advisor told this paper, and wondered why a whole Ministry of Information & Media Relations would choose to distort such an issue for partisan political capital. He said he suspected the Information Ministry had opportunistically sought to win public sympathy with its press statement by trying to create the impression that it was not only teachers, doctors and pharmacists who had not been paid their legitimate salaries, allowances and arrears. �Truth is truth. Salaries of the new presidential appointees; Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Presidential Advisors/Staffers/Aides are yet to be paid not because there is an understanding for them to adopt a conscious policy of sacrifice, selflessness, self-restraint and patriotism but because that has been the tradition; the convention; the history; rooted in the procedures and processes of the system the country has operated over the years. Enough of the spinning and deceit�, emphasised the former Minister.