Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta has apologised for the wrongful deletion of some names from government payroll.
Government recently announced the deletion names of over 26,000 public workers from the public payroll for failing to complete a biometric registration exercise with the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
By their failure to register, they were assumed to be 'ghost names' and were expunged saving Ghana about Gh¢433 million according to government.
It later turned out that some of the affected people were not indeed 'ghosts'. The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) claimed that more than half of the expunged names were actually members of the Association.
Speaking at the first ever National Policy Summit, the Minister of Finance admitted that some errors had been made in the exercise, "I don’t know the labour partners who we may have wronged, but going through the numbers, I actually found one or two of the directors of finance being included in the list, that they don’t exist.
He however stressed that although some names had been deleted inadvertently the exercise was crucial to saving the country some money.
“With wage issues we have to stay within appropriation and control of wages, the real question for all of us in the country is that we know that there is some rot in there, we know we need to take some action and in the process of taking the action a few wrong eggs will be broken and we should apologise for thatâ€.
Mr Ofori Atta promised the issue would be resolved as soon as possible for the affected persons to start receiving their salaries again.