More than 14,000 public sector workers whose salaries for the month of January were suspended by the Controller and Accountant-General will now be paid by February 2, 2015.
This follows the validation and certification of the payment vouchers of the affected workers by their heads of departments after the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) had opened a window of opportunity for them to do so.
The Controller and Accountant-General, Ms Grace Adzroe, who made this known to the Daily Graphic yesterday, said a supplementary payroll had been prepared for the affected workers to be paid.
She, however, noted that the heads of departments authorised the CAGD to delete the names of 20 workers from the payroll for various reasons, including retirement, resignation and death.
The CAGD had suspended the salaries of 14,829 employees in the Greater Accra Region from the mechanised payroll in January 2015 because their heads of departments failed to validate and certify the vouchers for payment.
According to the CAGD, the validation and certification of payment vouchers by heads of departments was a mandatory requirement for the payment of the salaries of employees.
However, the CAGD opened a window of opportunity for the affected workers by asking the heads of departments and management units who did not validate their employees to do so between Monday, January 26 and Tuesday, January 27, 2015.
At the end of the validation period last Tuesday, the management unit heads had validated all the employees on their payrolls, except 20 whose names the heads of departments asked the CAGD to delete from the payroll.
It will be recalled that in 2014, the CAGD introduced a system called the Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (E-SPV) to enable heads of departments to check and validate their payrolls online (through the Internet) before the CAGD runs the final payroll and effect payment.
Ms Adzroe said the validation process allowed managers of MDAs to own the data and determine who should be paid in a particular month.
She said if the heads of management units who were required to validate the payment vouchers did their job well, it would help delete ‘ghosts’ from the government payroll.
