William N. Jalulah
5 August 2008
Bolgatanga — The Controller and Accountant-General (CAG), Mr. Christian Sottie, has advised Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to submit documents and files of workers who are due for retirement, early enough to the CAGD for prompt payment of gratuities, upon retirement.
According to him, the late submission of documents and files by the MDAs, submission of incomplete and inaccurate information, third party confirmation, and payment of arears to pensioners, has been identified as major contributory factors to the delays in the processing, and payment of gratuities and pensions at the CAGD.
Addressing a cross section of pensioners in Bolgatanga, Mr. Sottie said it was estimated that 80% of the work involving pension processing, was performed by the MDAs, and the remaining 20% by the CAGD.
He said files of officers, who were due for retirement, were expected to be submitted to the CAGD by MDAs, three months before such officers retired.
However, such files were submitted several months or years, after the retirements of the officers.
He said some files submitted, did not contain all the information required for the processing of the gratuities and pensions, and were returned to the MDAs, for them to summit the needed information.
Mr. Sottie said currently, most MDAs have their own salary structures, different from the general salary structures previously being used to pay pensioners.
Thus, the CAGD was currently identifying the departments of other retirees, to be able to put them on their actual salary structures, and also for payment of areas.
In order to curtail delays in pension payment, he stated among other things that the CAGD would continue to educate the MDAs, about the need to submit pension documents of their staff on time, and has also engaged Information Technology experts, to automate the file tracking system at the pension section.
Mr. Sottie named Pension Computation and the Pension Payment, as the two sections responsible for processing and payment of pensions.
He explained that the Pension Computation Unit was responsible for the payment of gratuities, death gratuities, commuted/pension ex-gratia awards, and contract of gratuities to officers of the civil service, police service, prisons service, Ghana railways, and others, who qualified for pension under the Pension Ordinance Law CAP 30.
The pension payment, he said, was a section under the CAGD, which was responsible for the payment of monthly pension allowances, to retired officers from the civil service, Police Service, Armed Forces, Prisons Service, and other institutions, which subsist on government subvention.
The participants had the opportunity to raise questions and concerns, which Mr. Sottie addressed. Earlier, he met with public servants, and the general public at an interactive forum, where he explained some of the circumstances surrounding the operations of the CAGD, and obtained feedback.
Mr. Sottie said the system used for the processing, and payment of salaries to public servants, was called the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD).
It was operationalised in June 1995, but a post implementation review, revealed that the system had several problems in relation to payroll delivery.
The old system was referred to as IPPD1, and was replaced by the new system, IPPD2, which runs on an Oracle application software, as the modern and worldwide acclaimed software for payroll delivery.
Topics such as promotional areas, over-payment, loan recovery, tax in areas, and delays in salaries, NAGRAT agitations, Ghana Medical Association, were broadly explained to the participants.
Having explained vividly, the challenges in running the old system, Mr. Sottie was hopeful that with the new system, and the cooperation of all workers and stakeholders, things would gradually work for the betterment of all.
Mr. Sottie advised workers that resorting to radio stations and demonstrations for redress, should be the last option only, when all other redress avenues had been exhausted.
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