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The Minister for Finance, Seth Emmanuel Terkper yesterday announced that government has blocked the salaries of forty teachers in the Shai Osudoku District of the Greater Accra Region. According to him, the forty teachers were found not to be on their nominal management payroll, even though they were on the Government of Ghana payroll. They could also not be sighted during a headcount exercise organized by the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the Shai Osudoku district. He further explained that the said exercise was embarked upon to validate staff strength and determine whether there was adequate control over the management of the payroll and personnel records to confirm payroll data. �The audit has been completed and it was observed that 40 teachers representing 4.7 percent of the staff strength, who were on the GOG payroll were neither on the nominal payroll of their management units nor sighted during the headcount. �We have taken action to block the salaries of the 40 teachers whilst measures are being taken to expand the audit to cover other districts and also recover illegal payments�, Mr. Terkper noted. In view of this, he disclosed that the government would soon implement the Electronic Salary Payment Vouchers (ESPV) nationwide to prevent illegal payment of salaries to persons on government payroll. According to him, the ESPV, with a 24-hour access to payroll data, would provide online access to heads of management units and human resource managers to approve staff to be paid, in the month and the amount due them. Mr. Terkper, who made the pronouncement when he appeared before the august House to present the Mid-year budget review and supplementary budget for the year 2014, added that the ESPV would also allow for managers to continuously review payroll report. He further disclosed that, as at the end of June, after the ESPV has been deployed to 73.3 percent of management units in the Greater Accra Region, a total of 266 names have been deleted from government paying roll and block of 2,531 staff for investigation. He lamented that government expenditure on wages and salaries was taking a chunk of the nation�s resources, saying the wages and salaries were 26.2 percent higher than the estimated figure. �Expenditure on Wages and Salaries for the period totaled GH�3,802.9 million, 2.2 percent higher than the budget target of GH�3,720.3 million and 26.2 percent higher than the outturn for the same period in 2013. �In addition to this, an amount of GH�348.5 million was spent on the clearance of wage arrears�, he noted. But he was hopeful that the implementation of the ESPV would help to sanitize the GOG payroll and save monies that will be channel to other developmental projects. In conclusion, Mr. Terkper called on the legislative body to approve the sum of GH�3,196,855,671 million for the 2014 Supplementary Estimates.