Ghana must remove ghost workers from its payroll before the European Union resumes budget support it suspended a year ago.
This was the message from the EU ambassador to Ghana, William Hanna, on Tuesday.
Ghana receives up to $250 million worth of EU grants, which could be crucial as the country seeks to recover from a financial crisis.
Mr Hanna said EU aid was suspended because of the country’s fiscal problems and resumption will depend on the outcome of government talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The EU is investigating the presence of non-existent workers on government’s payroll.
“If we are paying for people in Ghana, it has to be real teachers, real nurses, not ghost workers,” Mr Hanna said.
“The government has to not just address it but deal with it, identify the ghost workers, take sanctions against those who are responsible, remove those names from the list, cleanup the database and stop these leakages,” he told Reuters.
Following the adjustment of salaries under single spine pay, the public sector wage bill pushed the budget deficit to 12.1 per cent This prompted rate agencies to downgrade Ghana.
Credit: Thomson Reuters Foundation
