Accra, Dec 11 (Graphic) -- The Auditor-General?s Department has given a fresh ultimatum to two key officials of the Ghana Education Service(GES) to provide the dates on which ghost names were deleted from the payroll or be surcharged with the billions of cedis lost to the state.

The directive, which takes effect from January 10 to January 18, 2005, affects the acting Director-General of the GES, Mr Michael Nsowah, and the Financial Controller of the GES, Mr Charles Otoo.

The new directive, according to the Auditor-General, followed the persistent failure of the latter to delete 169 ghost names from the service?s payroll, as well as provide information on the dates 675 others were separated from the GES.

Expressing his distaste at the reluctance of the GES officials to delete ghost names from the service?s payroll as well as provide accurate data to enable the Audit Service to determine the actual amount the government had lost through ghost names, the Auditor-General, Mr Edward Dua Agyeman,warned that his outfit could not be taken for granted.

?The immediate action which will be taken against the two officials if they fail to comply will be the withholding of their salaries for this month,? Mr Dua Agyeman warned. ?We are bent on ridding the government payroll of ghost workers and we would not allow ourselves to be dragged backwards,? he added.

According to him, the Audit Service observed that 675 names were deleted from the payroll between December 2001 and November 2004.?Their dates of separation are, however, yet to be provided to enable us to determine and recover the unearned salaries paid to them,?the Auditor-General pointed out.

?Twenty-two officers were said to be on study leave at the time of our audit in 2002. Their institutions of study at the time of our audit and their present locations have not been provided as requested by me,? he explained.Mr Dua Agyeman said the Ministry of Health (MOH) had been able to delete ghost names from its payroll and was in the process of compiling a full list of dates of separation and other relevant information.

The Auditor-General?s Department had, since November last year,given an ultimatum to the GES and the MOH to delete a total of 1,069 ghost names from their payrolls and submit the returns to the department or have the payment of salaries of key staff suspended.

A nationwide audit conducted between December 2001 and March 2002 revealed that a total of 844 ghost names were found on the GES payroll, the MOH 225 ghost names, with other government bodies accounting for 227, making a total of 1,296.It stated that a total of ?6.137 billion was paid to the separated staff during the period.

The report said it was also evident that most of the ghost names on the payrolls of the two bodies constituted teachers, doctors and nurses who had resigned and left the country but were still being paid their monthly salaries. Mr Otoo is on record to have admitted that there had been some delays in submitting the exact dates on which staff were separated from the GES payroll due to the large number.

He, therefore, appealed to the Auditor-General?s Department to give the GES enough time to be able to collate the information, adding that the ghost names were deleted as far back as 2001.Reacting to the Auditor-General?s decision, Mr Nsowah said his outfit had directed the various districts to submit the dates on which the ghost names were deleted from the payroll.

He said after the submission,it was realised that there had been a mix up and,therefore,the districts were prompted and asked to rectify all the anomalies. Mr Nsowah explained that his outfit pleaded with the Auditor-General to give the service two more weeks to be able to compile the needed information.

He added that some of the districts had begun submitting the rectified information and pointed out that the GES was not resting on its oars until everything had been rectified.

In a related development, Mr Dua Agyeman expressed appreciation to the Chief Executive of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, whose monitoring efforts resulted in the deletion of 141 ghost names from the hospital?s payroll.

A letter dated January 6, 2005 and signed by the Auditor-General and addressed to the Chief Executive of Korle-Bu said ?I wish to inform you that at the instance of my office, all the 141 names were deleted from the payroll at the Ministry of Health Integrated Payroll Personnel Database (IPPD) section on December 31, 2004.?

The letter added, ?I shall, however, be grateful if you will provide me with the dates the staff vacated their post and their SSNIT registration numbers to enable me to carry out an additional investigation into how much unearned salary was paid to each of the former officers.?