Sunyani, June 5, GNA - The Controller and Accountant General's Department is to establish a call centre to provide an avenue for public servants to make enquiries on payroll related issues free of charge in any part of the country.

Mr. Christian Tetteh Sottie, Controller and Accountant General, said in Sunyani on Thursday that the department had also established a payroll help desk to promptly assist employees with problems as a means to improving communication channels with clients. Mr. Sottie was addressing a forum to interact with public servants on how to improve service delivery and to provide an avenue for the department to explain its operations.

He said the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System Database (IPPD) used for processing and payment of salaries to public servants, which became operational in 1995, was engulfed with several problems in relation with payroll delivery. "A decision was taken by the department in 1998 to replace the IPPD1 system because the software was no longer supported by the company that produced the software SIGAGIP and the company itself was out of business."

Mr. Sottie said the IPPD1 was replaced with the IPPD2 in 1999, which run on oracle application software and was modern and worldwide acclaimed software for payroll delivery and was stopped in 2001 due to the lack of funds.

"The oracle software is not only modern but is also superior in its ability to handle large volumes of data that can easily be converted into spread sheets for detailed analysis and also facilitate the generation of various reports", he said.

The Accountant General said the department could not get enough time to re-configure the system, up-load and update the database before the IPPD2 system, all because just after the data loading in 2006, the IPPD1 server crashed and the department had no option than to use the IPPD2 system to effect payment of salaries and pensions. "This has posed very great challenges not only to the consultants who supervised its implementation but also to the department in its payroll administration and has left in its wake disgruntled workers, pensioners and very disturbed government officials", Mr. Sottie said. He expressed concern that some employees were deducted monies for goods they had not bought on hire purchase, indicating that some employees were wrongfully deducted because others used their pay slips to purchase goods.

Mr. Sottie advised employees to guard their pay slips "since there are indications that some unscrupulous persons are stealing pay slips of individuals to use in impersonating".

On the seizure of the October salaries of National Association of Graduate Teachers, he said the stoppage of the salaries was effected based on a directive from the Ghana Education Service Council, which indicated that payment of salaries was based on inputs made onto payroll system by the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). "Therefore, it is the MDAs who decide which of their staff should be paid or not. The Department stops salaries only when it has been so authorized or directed by the MDAs concerned", Mr. Sottie said. He appealed to workers and pensioners to regard the department as a partner and to cooperate with it through regular feed back to help improve service delivery.