No salary arrears - Sottie

Saturday, December 13, 2008 (Page 28)

THE Controller and Accountant-General, Mr Christian Tetteh Sottie, has stated that the government is not in arrears of salaries for public servants.
According to him, the salaries for 378,623 public servants totalling GH¢112.9 million for the month of November 2008 had been paid.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic in reaction to reports that some public servants had not received their salaries, Mr Sottie said “as far as we are concerned, public servants have been paid. No one has brought any complaint to our notice. We will act immediately when such problems are brought before us.”
He further stated that the December salaries for public servants would be released to the banks on December 18, 2008.
Explaining what led to the delays in the payment of salaries to public servants in the past few months, Mr Sottie said such problems began when the government payroll started running fully on the Oracle software popularly known as the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Database (IPPD2) in October 2006.
According to him some of the problems encountered included overpayments, underpayments and recoveries of overpayments, among others.
One disturbing factor he mentioned was the fact that the pay details of public servants pay slips did not give enough details about how the net pay of workers were arrived at.
To address those anomalies, Mr Sottie pointed out that the software was upgraded to a newer version which took into consideration the problems encountered in the past.
Mr Sottie pointed out that the upgraded software was used to process the payroll of government workers for the first time in October 2008, adding that several controls had been built into the upgraded software to check errors and abuses.
Following the upgrading of the IPPD2 system, Mr Sottie said moneys which were overpaid to workers were recovered but during the recovery process, it was observed workers were severely affected.
Consequently, Mr Sottie stated that the recoveries were suspended for investigation to establish beyond reasonable doubts that all the recoveries were correct before effecting the deductions.
He also admitted that his department was mindful of the fact that the overpayments did not result from the fault of the workers hence the need to spread the recoveries over a long period to ameliorate the suffering of workers.
Mr Sottie disclosed that all arrears due staff before the commencement of IPPD2 in June and October 2006 had been paid, adding that overpayment recoveries had also been refunded while investigations continued.
He once again apologised to all workers for any inconvenience caused them during the upgrading of the IPPD2.
The Controller and Accountant-General assured workers that his doors were wide open, and for that matter they should not hesitate to bring to his knowledge problems they were encountering in connection with their salaries.