Out of the 602,000 government employees on the Controller and Accountant General’s Department payroll, a staggering 148,000 were found to have identifications that did not match any biometric identification at the National Identity Authority.
This was discovered, according to the Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, following a biometric audit by the Controller and Accountant General’s Department.
On Tuesday, August 16, Dr. Bawumia revealed at the 2022 Internal Audit Agency Conference in Accra that 533 employees on the government payroll who had several identities had also been discovered by the department’s biometric audit.
He claimed that several actions had been done by the government in an effort to accomplish fiscal consolidation, including improved revenue mobilization and employing digitization to reduce waste in the public sector.
Through the strong identity system the government is constructing with the Ghanacard and the digitization of government services, Dr. Bawumia disclosed that the government is making a concerted effort to combat identity fraud and corruption in the public sector.
“Fiscal consolidation is a significant area of focus for the 2022 budget as we undertake our economic revitalization and transformation program to better the lives of Ghanaians, Bawumia emphasized.
“Over the past four years, we have implemented policies to lay a firm platform for domestic mobilization, cost reduction, and corruption-fighting through digital transformation. Additionally, significant progress has been accomplished.
According to a recent exercise by the Controller and Accountant General Department, 533 CAD users have numerous identities in the CAGD database, according to Bawumia.
The employees have several CAGS accounts with various emotes numbers in all instances of multiple identities. Three employee numbers are used by some.
The National Identification Register did not match the biometrics of 148,060 employees out of 601,948 (i.e., no Ghanacard).
“We’re going to see if their biometrics can be matched using the SSNIT database. Additionally, some individuals with compatible biometrics could have several employee accounts.
The shocking admissions by the vice president come after reports that the National Service Scheme (NSS) recently discovered 14,000 ghost names on its payroll during a biometric check, saving the scheme GHC112 million a year.
