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About 385,000 government employees on the mechanised payroll have been registered on the electronic payslip system as of the end of June 2014, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Terkper, has announced. He said the registration exercise was ongoing and was optimistic that all staff on government payroll would be registered by the end of 2014. Presenting the mid-year review of 2014 Budget to Parliament yesterday, Mr Terpker said the Electronic System Payment Voucher (ESPV) system gave online access to heads of management units and human resource managers to approve staff to be paid for a particular month, as well as the amounts to be paid to them. He said with the 24-hour access to the payroll data, the manager had adequate time to continuously review the payroll report. The Finance Minister said verbal complaints by employees on salaries had minimized because the system provided information to employees, as well as an avenue for channelling of complaints. Ghost names Mr Terpker disclosed that a pilot audit of staff of the Ghana Education Service in the Shai Osudoku District in the Greater Accra Region had revealed that 40 teachers, representing 4.7 per cent of the staff strength who were on government payroll, were ghosts. The exercise was to validate staff strength and determine whether adequate controls existed over the management of the payroll and personnel records to confirm payroll data. Mr Terkper explained that the 40 teachers were neither on the nominal payroll of their management units nor were they sighted during a headcount. Remedial action, he said, had been taken to block the salaries of the 40 teachers while measures were being taken to expand the audit to cover other districts and also recover illegal payments. Biometric database He also announced that a validation of the current biometric database was in progress to isolate duplicate names. �A total of 1,656 employees� data have been identified as duplicates for further interrogation with an estimated payroll cost savings of about GH�6.5 million,� he further disclosed. Mr Terkper said a comprehensive human resource management policy framework and manual had been approved by Cabinet, adding that the training of selected public service organisations for the policy framework and manual would begin in August 2014. Furthermore, he said, a Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) was being implemented to strengthen controls around the entrance, progression and exit of public service employees, as well as link HR information to budget preparation and payroll processing. Nine ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), constituting about 80 per cent of the total workforce in the public service, have been selected to pilot the project.