PAYROLL FRAUD PART III: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT As I stated in the second part, this report shows clearly how a particular party decided to perpetrate crime against the country with impunity. It is for this and many other reasons why I am very surprised about the outburst by Franklin Cudjoe of IMANI Ghana and his threat of writing to IMF about Ghana’s intentions to seek for some kind of assistance from the Breton Wood institution. The auditors made several recommendations which government need to be very careful when implementing those recommendations so as not to come back here to discuss same issues again in the future. I am also very much aware that the Controller and Accountant General is already implementing some of the recommendations made by the auditors. The process for the reform must be well thought through so that no other politician for their personal and wicked agenda, could manipulate the system in the future to include several ghost names with such impunity as revealed by this report. For instance, one of the security threats of the IPPD2 Payroll System raised by the auditors is that “Data entry staffs have access to modify employees allowances”. This is very dangerous as people could just pay some money to any of these data entry staffs and various forms of allowances will be paid to undeserving government employees. It is important that the security of the system is restructured in such a way that about two or three senior officers only have access to such modifications so it will be possible for tracing the point of responsibilities. Listen to this other finding by the auditors and what they have to say about it. “The “view only” responsibility granted to the technical and reporting team members and sectional heads of PPS in the IPPD2 has access to run rollback or retry payrolls. “View only” responsibilities having payroll run/rollback access is a major security issue and a risk to accurate payroll processing. All “view only” responsibilities should not be provided with the access to run payroll and should be addressed immediately”. Can you imagine such lapses? That anybody (like this very auditors) who want to just view the data for any purpose such as monitoring can run the payroll? It is very important that serious consultations are done with experts to see the best way to reconfigure the software to eliminate such lapses permanently. In my opinion all the data entry columns, especially those elements that could affect the calculation of the final salaries paid to employees must all be restricted to very few management staffs who could only access the data and make changes using some kind of special password that could be traceable to every individual at all times. Government must commission some experts to review the whole Oracle system and make sure that all security features that come with the software are activated and coded. Interestingly, we all know that the Oracle could have all those features configured and nobody in current or future could just easily manipulate the system without a trace. This activity will definitely deny many people of their dubious means of extra earnings and for that matter will meet some resistance even from the top management. Government must however put her foot down and ensure that this is done once and for all so we will never have ghost names anymore. As we discuss this issue today, it is our hope that this is the last time the issue of ghost names in our national payroll is being discussed and we will have a very clean payroll system that rewards only hard work and dedication. The system must be run on auto in the sense that once you reach the retirement age the system automatically ceases to process your salaries as an employee and moves you automatically into the pension payroll. If there is any funny entry into the system, like your date of birth which the system can calculate and see that you are a minor, then the system would just nicely refuse to process any salaries for that name. it can also be configured in such a way that once the employee records have no traceable bank account the system just reject to process the salary payment automatically. We all need to support government as they have decided to tackle this menace, to continue to ensure that it is eradicated completely and never to reoccur in the foreseeable future. GOD BLESS OUR HOMELAND GHANA LET US ALL UPHOLD HER AND BE PART OF BUILDING A BETTER GHANA FOR OUR CHILDREN By George E. Ekegey
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 09:47:57 +0000
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