'GHOST' EXPELS HEALTH BOSS...From Accountant-General's payroll (LEAD STORY)

Story: George Ernest Asare, Kumasi

The move to purge the payroll of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) of ghost names has resulted in the deletion of the name of the Director-General of the service, Dr E. K. Sory.
Dr Sory found himself among scores of health workers whose names were on the payroll but declared as “ghost workers” during the latest head count conducted within the service.
Victims of the exercise who are actually at post in various health institutions across the country, have not received any salary since March, this year.
When he realised that his name had been deleted from the payroll, Dr Sory last month wrote a letter to the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, expressing the displeasure of the service about the anomaly.
In the letter, the Director-General wondered why those who carried out the exercise failed to check from the GHS before effecting the deletion of the names from the payroll at the Accountant-General’s Department.
In Kumasi alone, more than 50 health workers in active service, including those in top management positions, were affected by the Head Count Exercise, which sought to delete names of workers they suspected not to be in active service from the payroll of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department.
While some of the affected workers said they were relying on friends and family members to support them financially to cater for their immediate needs, others said they had resorted to borrowing from financial institutions and workplaces to enable them to make ends meet.
“We wish to express our displeasure at the inadequate involvement of the service in the validation of the data that was collated across the country during this important national exercise,” Dr Sory’s letter noted.
The letter, written on April 7, 2008, pointed out that “health workers in active service did not receive their salaries for March 2008”.
“The Director-General of GHS is among those who have been affected by this irregularity,” it added, and pointed out that the “anomaly stems from the erroneous deletion of names of the affected staff from the payroll following the recent Head Count Exercise, which was carried out in the country’s public sector under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Controller and Accountant General’s Department and the Ghana Statistical Service”.
According to the letter, “most of the affected workers were among those who duly filled the relevant forms with their passport pictures”.
Dr Sory, therefore, appealed to the sector minister to take urgent steps “to rectify this anomaly to forestall any potential labour unrest in the service”.
He, however, urged Heads of the Budget and Management Centres (BMC’s) and (GHS) “to prevail on their respective staff to exercise maximum restraints while efforts are being made to get their names back on the payroll”.