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The Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (ESPV) System is yet to achieve its full objectives , Mr Kwasi Kwaning-Bosompem, the Acting Deputy Controller and Accountant-General responsible for payroll management, has said.

He said the reasons among others were the lack of the understanding of the validation process, wrong management units assigned to validators and untrained validators established in the system.

Mr Kwaning-Bosompem was speaking at the opening of a one-day payroll sensitization workshop for stakeholders and employees on Government of Ghana (GoG) payroll.

The effort was to sensitize the more than 1000 heads of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) on payroll issues and retrain users of the ESPV system.

It is a nationwide programme and Brong-Ahafo is the second in the series after the Eastern Region.

The participants were drawn from the Sunyani, Tano North and Tano South Municipalities and the Sunyani West District as the first zone of the training in the region while Berekum East Municipality, Goaso in the Asunafo North Municipality and other areas have also been zoned to be covered by the organisers.

He said the ESPV was introduced against the backdrop of concerns regarding the high wage bill of public servants and the commitment of government to have a robust payroll system that would ensure effective and efficient management of the payroll costs by eliminating unauthorised payments.

Mr Kwaning-Bosompem urged heads of departments to take ownership of their payroll (using the system) and take steps to validate the payroll every month in line with Regulation 297 of the Financial Administration Regulation, 2004 Legislative Instrument (LI) 1802 to achieve the objective of the ESPV.

“This implies No Validation, No Pay”, the Acting Deputy Controller and Accountant-General in-charge of payroll management said.

Mrs Elizabeth Osei, the Director of payroll at the Controller and Accountant General’s Department later in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said on the average the Department paid between 530,000 and 540,000 government employees every month.

She said the situation poses a huge systemic management responsibility on the department and this required efficiency on the part of all stakeholders of the ESPV System to avoid any discrepancies that could lead to unauthorised payments at the expense of the state.