Investigations conducted by the Ghanaian Observer Newspaper indicate that some staff of Youth Employment Agency (YEA), formerly known as the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) have been paid illegal monies amounting to about GH₵1 million.
Documents obtained from the Audit Service Department of the Ministry of Local Government show that most of these monies were paid to either ghost staff or persons who were not enrolled after commencing training at the agency.
A total amount of GH₵ 895,536.18, according to a report by the audit service, was given to some 126 staff who were not enrolled on the program.
Having been dismissed from the program, these recruits were given these monies fraudulently, according to the audit service report.
The report stated that these new recruits were not entitled to any form of salaries or allowances since they were not even captured on the GYEEDA payroll under the Ministry of Local Government.
Another batch of some 19 ghost employees whose data were not found on the local Government Payroll were allegedly paid huge sums of money under fictitious circumstances at the Agency.
Surprisingly however, these 19 illegal staff were included both in the interview reports as well as the paid migrated staff at the agency.
Further checks by this paper at the GYEEDA Secretariat revealed that apart from the service providers who largely benefitted from this loot, the activities of some unscrupulous senior staff officers at the secretariat made the State to lose millions.
Verifiable reports from the Audit Service indicate that there had been illegal monies paid form the coffers of the agency from 2012 to 2014.
Strangely, very report of the agency since 2012 had been saddled with inexplicable fraudulent payments.
A total of GH1 million have so far been realized to have been paid to some unaccounted staff at the Agency as the State struggles to recover these monies!
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