The Ministry of Economic Planning and the Controller and Accountant General's Department (CAGD) have jointly warned that from January next year, payment of salaries to subvented organisations which persistently refuse to send their staff list to the CAGD would be stopped. Officials of the two institutions, who issued the warning in Accra yesterday, said any organisation which failed to abide by the directive to send the needed data before the end of the year should look for its own resources to pay its staff. At a meeting between officials of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and heads of subvented organisations at which the Daily Graphic happened to be present, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, said "we cannot continue to pay people whose numbers we do not know". He said the government spent ¢19 trillion out of its cash revenue of ¢32 trillion annually on salaries and related expenditure alone, adding that there was, therefore, the need to plug all loopholes. "To put it in perspective, in May 2007, about ¢1.2 trillion was spent on salaries alone. Assuming a loss of one percent, that translates into GH¢117,617.97 or (¢1,176,179,700) per month". He said to check abuses and minimise corruption on the payroll, it was high time all subvented organisations moved onto the Integrated Personnel Payroll Database (IPPD II) system, which was more robust and had Security features. Mr Baah-Wiredu said it was necessary for the Controller and Accountant-General to Know how many people were working for the government but not the present situation where one had to collate reports from several systems before arriving at figures which might not be reliable. He said as if that was not enough, the figures kept on changing on monthly basis, a situation which he said had the tendency to negatively affect the national budget and push it out of gear. The Finance Minister said for sometime now, the ministry had tried hard to get all such organisations which were self accounting and, therefore, were not paid by the CAGD to add their names to the government payroll but to no avail. The Director of Budget, Mr Kwabena Adjei Mensah, said in some instances, staff of the ministry who were sent to some of those subvented organisations to collect data were chased out. He commended some of the organisations notably the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service for their co-operation on the issue, adding that others had either provided inadequate information on their staff or had completely refused to abide by the directives. The Daily Graphic said its investigations at the Ministry of Finance revealed that some of the subvented organisations which had not as yet provided any data to the CAGD were the Ghana Standards Board, Environmental Protection Agency, Ghana News Agency, University of Ghana and the University of Ghana Business School. Mr Adjei-Mensah said the government could not ignore issues concerning wages and salaries, where about 10 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was expended adding that the organisations involved should comply or have themselves to blame. He observed that it was unfortunate for some organisations to keep adding to their number after they had already been provided for under the budget and expressed concern that the government's efforts to improve the salaries and condition of service of civil and public servants could not be achieved if there were insufficient control in the payment systems to ensure transparency and curtail waste. The Controller and Accountant-General, Mr Christian Sottie, said it was unfortunate that a larger portion of national revenue went into wages and salaries to the detriment of investment, administration and services. He entreated all organisations which had so far not forwarded the necessary data on human resource to CAGD to do so adding that any of them who had difficulty in doing so should contact his outfit for assistance. Source: Daily Graphic