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The Controller and Accountant General's Department (CAGD) is confident that new initiatives from the department, the Public Services Commission (PSC) and the Ministry of Finance will help expunge the names of non-working people from the public payroll and bring to an end the existence of 'ghosts,' which is costing the nation about GH�100 million every month. The measures include monthly updates of employee lists by heads of the various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) before salaries are paid, introduction of an electronic salary payment voucher (E-SPV), discontinuation of salaries to staff without up-to-date bank accounts and the phased implementation of the Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS). The implementation of those measures have been ongoing for sometime now and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. BNI investigates Over the period the implementation of these measures have been ongoing, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of CAGD, Mr Gilbert Nyaledzigbor, said the department had realised some successes, hence the optimism that their successful completion would help make 'ghost' names in the payroll a thing of the past. A case in point, he said, was the recent call on employees to update their bank account numbers, which led to the realisation that about 47,186 employees on the payroll did not have up-to-date bank details. "In the past, people didn't have account numbers in their data. So, the question was, if the salaries go to the banks, how do the banks credit those people who do not have bank accounts? Because of that we sent notices to heads of institutions and employees to update their bank account numbers," he explained. After the exercise, over 44,490 of the affected names submitted their details while 2,690 did not. Currently, Mr Nyaledzigbor said the names of those who did not submit their details have been forwarded to the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) for investigations and subsequent advice. "BNI will soon give us a report on those names and based on that we will know what to do next; whether to prosecute them or not," he said. Integrating HRMIS with payroll Over the years, the government has relied on the payroll for the records and other key information on employees, whose salaries pass through the CAGD. Beyond it being fraught with loopholes that make it easier for 'ghost' names to exist, the payroll does not fully capture the working histories of employees for proper management and coordination by the CAGD, the Finance Ministry and PSC. To help address the issue and bring efficiency to the public service, the government introduced the HRMIS, which is a component of the Ghana Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS), to be interfaced with the payroll after it has been fully implemented. The interface is to help create a one-stop shop on the working history and HR related work flow on all public sector employees in the country. Ultimately, Mr Nyaledzigbor said the HRMIS would make it possible and easier for the PSC, CAGD and the ministry to track, coordinate and manage human resource issues in all public institutions. "That HR aspect of the public service is being automated. This way, if a staff resigns, retires, has fallen sick or is on leave, everybody will be able to know and the right decision taken quickly. In the long run, the HRMIS will help us to gather data on all employees, make it impossible for institutions to be over-staffed and then improve the human resource management process in the system,"he said. The system is expected to help reduce the manual way of updating the payroll, where only the unit heads of public sector institutions will know which staff goes on leave, resigns, retires or dies. The CAGD PRO said the implementation of the system was currently on pilot basis and would complement similar initiatives aimed at tracking and removing the names of 'ghosts' in the payroll, which is said to have cost the nation some GH�1 billion in 2013, equivalent to 1.3 per cent of that year's gross domestic product.