Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said a staggering 148,060 workers on government payroll at the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department have biometric identifications which do not match any bio-data at the National Identification Authority.
According to him, the development was discovered after a biometric audit by the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department, indicating that all those persons do not have Ghana Cards that match their details on government payroll.
Addressing the 2022 Internal Audit Agency Conference in Accra on Tuesday August 16, Dr. Bawumia also revealed the Controller General’s biometric audit also found 533 workers on government payroll with multiple identities.
“An exercise just completed last week by the Controller and Accountant-General Department shows that 533 people on the CAD have multiple identities in the CAGD database,” Dr. Bawumia revealed. In all cases of multiple identities, the employees have more than one CAGS account with different emotes numbers. Some have three employee numbers.
“There are also 148,060 employees out of 601,948 with biometrics that did not match anyone on the National Identification Register, i.e. no Ghana Card,” he stated.
The Vice President, who was speaking on the Conference’s theme “Injecting Fiscal Discipline in Resource Mobilization and Utilization for Sustainable Development,” said, as part of government’s quest to achieve fiscal consolidation, many steps have been taken, including improved revenue mobilization and curbing wastages in the public sector by using digitization.
The efforts, Dr. Bawumia revealed includes a rigorous fight against identity fraud and corruption in the public sector, through the robust identity system, the government is building with the Ghanacard and the digitization of government services.
“A key focus of the 2022 budget is fiscal consolidation to enhance debt and fiscal sustainability as we implement our economic revitalization and transformation programme to better the lives of Ghanaians,” Dr. Bawumia said.
“Over the last four years, our approach has been to put in measures to build a solid foundation for domestic mobilisation, cost saving and fighting corruption through digital transformation. And considerable progress has been made.”
SSNIT Next
Dr. Bawumia said, as part of measures to stem the leakages in the system, “We are also going to check the SSNIT database to see if their biometrics can be matched. It is also possible that some of those with matching biometrics may also have multiple employee accounts.”
Meanwhile, through the government’s digitization drive and the implementation of a national identity system, SSNIT also announced major savings of up $126 million by adopting the Ghana Card number as SSNIT number and stopping the printing of SSNIT ID cards for its targeted 10 million people.
Again, a recent biometric audit by the National Service Scheme (NSS) found about 14,000 ghost names on its payroll, which saved the scheme about GHC112 million annually after their removal.
Vice President Bawumia, who was not pleased with the level of loses due to corruption, charged the various prosecuting agencies to begin the processes of prosecuting persons involved in such criminal activities.
