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Hundreds of old pensioners in Koforidua in the Eastern Region have been dragged from their homes and in some cases their sick beds in order to be verified at an ongoing headcount exercise by the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD).

Reports indicate that the Apenteng Hall of the Koforidua Methodist Church where the exercise is taking place is a sore sight stranded aged pensioners waiting in line to be counted. Some of the pensioners are said to be showing signs of fatigue as they arrive in taxis or on wheel chairs.

“Some of the pensioners were carried on the back of family members,” reports Koforidua-based Ultimate FM.
CAGD is undertaking a comprehensive bid to clean the country’s payroll data to quell controversies over bloated public sector payroll with ghost names. CAGD began the process last year with a headcount of all staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES).

The government-backed move will ensure integration of payroll data with Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Biometric database as a means of ensuring single identity of employees on the payroll. However, some experts have decried the method being used to verify the pensioners in the Eastern Region.

A 72-year-old man lamented, “some of us came as early as 3:30am and we are still here, I am number 238 and I have no idea when I will leave here and go home. “The officials should have devised better means of carrying out this exercise, for example, by using alphabetical order, then you know when it will get to your turn”.

He thinks CAGD officials could have gone to the homes of listed pensioners to conduct the headcount, which would have captured bedridden pensioners as well.
“To allow us to move all the way from the house to come and queue in distress, it’s inhumane,” he tells Ultimate FM.