President John Dramani Mahama last week announced that there has been an introduction of 'biometric process' to identify all who are on the public payroll and to check fraud in respect of these payrolls, but The Daily Searchlight can state on authority that President John Dramani Mahama peddled a very gargantuan lie.

The president said in paragraph 13 “Steps such as introduction of biometric processes to identify all who are on the public payroll and to check fraud in respect of these payrolls have also been undertaken and have already begun to yield result. We are therefore, close to eliminating the age-old problem of 'ghost names' that inflated public expenditure.”

However, checks conducted by The Daily Searchlight in several ministries and state-owned agencies have shown that nothing of that nature has happened, is happening or is about to happen, and the announcement by the president came as a great surprise and mystery to many public servants.

What has shocked many government workers is the further announcement that the minister of finance and the controller and accountant-general was required to ensure completion of the 'biometric records of public servants throughout the country' by the end of the year.

“How can we conclude such a major programme like registering hundreds of thousands of public workers biometric ally by December when we have not even started or brought a single computer in this regard?' a senior official at the controller and accountant general department wondered.

Amazingly, President Mahama even went ahead to apologize to the workers, saying that 'this might entail some inconvenience to public sector employees in for delayed payments and I crave their indulgence so we can ensure successful completion of this all important national exercise', when nothing of the sort was taking place.

“The President is just telling a very gargantuan lie,” said a highly placed source at the controller and accountant general department. “if he says that the process has already started and that it is already paying-off and is about to eliminate ghost names, departments and agencies where workers have been registered by the biometric process and how many of such workers have been discovered to be ghost names taking unjustified monies at the end of every month”.