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Despite all the great work done by KPMG, an international auditing firm which exposed most of the fraudulent activities going on the Government of Ghana payroll including �ghost names,� the Controller and Accountant General�s Department failed to fully implement its recommendations. An attempt by a private ICT firm, SOFTTribe, contracted by the government to rollout a clean government payroll, was also frustrated by the �system� for reasons one cannot decipher. Not even a suggestion from the former Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Dufuor, to right the wrong was heeded to by the CAGD. On June 12, 2012, Dr. Dufuor wrote a letter to the Controller and Accountant General�s Department, instructing it and SOFTTribe, an ICT firm that had developed a new software known as� Akatua� for the government, to migrate the subvented payrolls onto �Akatua�. These subvented agencies include institutions such as the universities, polytechnics, National Service Secretariat (NSS), Ghana Police Service, and Forestry Commission, among others, which constitute about 30% of workers on the government payroll. Unfortunately, this was not done. The Chronicle is reliably informed that it is this 30% of workers on the payroll being run by the CAGD that has so many �ghost names� and draining the government off the needed resources to execute development projects to the benefit of all Ghanaians. Dr. Dufuor�s Letter Dr. Dufuor�s letter, which was headed, �RUNNING OF LIVE ACTIVE PAYROLL ON IPPD3�, reads: Over the past 6 years, your organization has been running live payroll from the IPPD2 (old payroll system known as Oracle) with numerous challenges. The IPPD (Akatua) was therefore procured in 2008 as a back-up system. As it is now, your organization has two payroll systems, viz. IPPD2 (oracle) and IPPD3 (Akatua) and it is my understanding that since the purchase of the IPPD3 it has been running in parallel on standby. Given the current challenges with the payroll, I request that you give the IPPD3 on-site team currently running the live pensions access to run the live active payroll in its totality. To this end, please write to the vendors of the IPPD3, i.e., the SOFTTribe Ltd, and request for a comprehensive project roll-out plan for implementation. You are also requested to submit a monthly report from both the IPPD2 and IPPD3 with effect from this, June 2012. Kindly treat this request with all the �urgency it deserves. Yours sincerely, Dr. Kwabena Dufuor. The Chronicle established that based on this instruction, SOFTTribe worked and completed the loading and test processing of the universities, and was about to continue with the National Service and the rest, when it was ordered to stop work. Late last year, the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) uncovered massive fraud associated with the payroll of the NSS. Millions of Ghana cedis were being siphoned on a monthly basis into individual pockets. Suspicious orders Available information indicates that in January 2013 after Dr. Duffuor had left office as Minister of Finance, the CAGD wrote to inform SOFTTribe that the CAGD was suspending all further migration of payrolls onto Akatua, a move which was pregnant with suspicions. In a statement released on Saturday, the Chief Executive Officer of SOFTtribe, Tetteh Antonio, noted that this was not the first time the CAGD had halted their work, which was meant to wipe away all the fraud on the government payroll. In a statement released last week by the CAGD in reaction to the KPMG report being carried by the media, the CAGD stated that �Akatua� was equally confronted with the same challenges of payroll management as the Oracle system IIPPD2 (the payroll system being run by the government), which is also owned by CAGD. Mr. Tetteh Antonio, however, dismissed the claim. According to him, when the �Akatua� (meaning payment in Akan) software was first implemented in 2008, it flagged and rejected the faulty data which had been retrieved from the Oracle system being implemented by the CAGD then. �CAGD instructed SOFTtribe to temporarily disable the requisite controls from Akatua, such that it could accept the faulty data from their Oracle system. CAGD informed SOFTtribe that CAGD was responsible for payroll administration and validation, whereas SOFTtribe was responsible for the technology. SOFTTribe, therefore, duly complied with their client�s request,� the CEO noted. Softtribe Statement The following is the full statement issued by SOFTtribe and copied to The Chronicle. �Over the last week, a number of issues have been raised in the national media by IMANI and responded to by CAGD, concerning the Government payroll. SOFTtribe has been specifically mentioned in a number of these interviews, and some erroneous information has been reported on our involvement with the government payroll. As a reputable locally grown ICT software development company with over 20 years� experience in payroll and numerous clients, we are extremely concerned that our international reputation may be tarnished and we wish to set the record straight. SOFTtribe developed the first versions of Akatua HRMIS/payroll management software over 20 years ago. CAGD purchased Akatua known as IPPD3 in 2008, and currently uses it to process 70% of live government payroll. CAGD states that Akatua is equally confronted with the same challenges of payroll management as the Oracle system IPPD2 which is also owned by CAGD. This is not completely accurate. When Akatua was first implemented in 2008, it flagged and rejected the faulty data which had been retrieved from the Oracle system. SOFTtribe would like to state here that Akatua possesses a rigorous set of validations and controls, which is known in the industry. CAGD instructed SOFTtribe to temporarily disable the requisite controls from Akatua, such that it could accept the faulty data from their Oracle system. CAGD informed SOFTtribe that CAGD was responsible for payroll administration and validation, whereas SOFTTribe was responsible for the technology. SOFTtribe, therefore, duly complied with their client�s request and successfully processed five years of unprocessed arrears in under six weeks, which the Oracle system had been incapable of processing over the years. The CAGD was duly satisfied with the quality and speed of the work executed. Given that SOFTtribe deemed this situation to be unusual, based on SOFTtribe�s industry experience, at the handover of Akatua to the CAGD, SOFTtribe was compelled to alert the CAGD of the dire state of the data they had received. (Please find attached the alert issued to CAGD on 12th February 2010, and the relevant Arrears Release Order).