The identity of 148,000 out of a total of 602,000 workers on government payroll has been found not to match any biometric identification at the National Identification Authority, after a biometric audit by the Controller and Accountant General Department (CAGD), Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has disclosed.

Addressing the 2022 Internal Audit Agency Conference in Accra on Tuesday, Dr Bawumia said 533 workers on government payroll were found to have multiple identities.

According to the Audit Report by CAGD, in all cases of multiple identities, the employees had more than one CAGD account with different remote numbers. Some have three employee numbers.

The Vice President, who was speaking on the Conference's theme "Injecting Fiscal Discipline in Resource Mobilization and Utilization for Sustainable Development," said the government, as part of its quest to achieve fiscal consolidation, had taken many steps, including the use of digitisation to improved revenue mobilisation and curbing wastage in the public sector.

Those efforts, Dr Bawumia indicated, included a rigorous fight against identity fraud and corruption in the public sector through the robust identity system, the use of the Ghanacard and the digitization of government services.

"A key focus of the 2022 budget is fiscal consolidation to enhance debt and fiscal sustainability as we implement our economic revitalization and transformation programme to better the lives of Ghanaians," Dr Bawumia said.

Over the last four years, the Vice President said the government approach was to build a solid foundation for domestic mobilisation, cost saving and fighting corruption through digital transformation.

"We are going to check the SSNIT database to see if their biometrics can be matched. It is also possible that some of those with matching biometrics may also have multiple employee accounts."

The disclosure by the Vice President followed news of a recent biometric audit conducted by the National Service Scheme (NSS), which found about 14,000 "ghost" names on its payroll, which saved the scheme about GHC 112m annually.

As part of the government's digitization drive and the implementation of a national identity system, SSNIT also announced major savings of up $126 million since it stopped printing SSNIT ID cards for its clients, following the adoption of the Ghanacard as SSNIT numbers.