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Mr Frank Fuseini Adongo, Deputy Upper East Regional Minister has admonished all heads of departments in the region to appropriately inform their officials to take government’s Nationwide Payroll and Personnel Verification Audit seriously.

He said the office of the Auditor–General (A-G) requested for the exercise to clean the public payroll of anomalies detected in spite of the intermittent clean-ups in the past. Among some of the key concerns the Auditor- General’s Department observed was the widespread use of fake certificates.

This, he said resulted in many civil servants receiving salaries based on promotions that they were not entitled to, adding that unqualified employees and ghost workers who drew salaries from the public purse, invariably drained the economy, and raised questions from anti-corruption agencies.

Mr Adongo who was speaking at a meeting of Heads of Departments in the region with the A-G and his team, emphasised that resources were spent to unravel the rot on the payroll, and entreated all civil and public servants to cooperate with the verification team who were in the region to commence the exercise.

He noted that the 1992 constitution of Ghana made specific provisions designed to address vexed questions of corruption, and taking state funds without working for it, adding that Article 218 (e) enjoined the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate all instances of suspected corruption and misappropriation of public funds by public officials, and take appropriate steps to retrieve them.

Quoting the same chapter on the code of conduct for a public officer, Mr Adongo said Article 284 provided that “a public officer shall not put himself in a position where his interest conflicts or is likely to conflict with the performance of the functions of his office.”

He said government in line with these and other provisions, had taken steps to close all gaps and leakages which public officials used to loot public funds through the appropriate institutions such as the Audit Service.

“I must state that corruption has become so common and seen acceptable by most Ghanaians in our daily endeavours such that some of us see corrupt practices as normal. A cross section of society have associated extreme poverty and perverse inequality of citizens as part of the causes of corruption. However, this is not justifiable to embrace corruption.”

In this light, Mr Adongo said the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo established the office of the Special Prosecutor to work with anti-corruption agencies and public services to reduce corruption and bring corrupt officials to book.

“I must say that if each of us shun corruption and its associated issues, we will soon make the Office of the Special Prosecutor an Advisory Body rather than a Prosecuting Institution,” he said.