Ghana has removed more than 67,000 ghost names from the public sector payroll as part of an ongoing reform programme, with government now moving to lock in the gains through a set of anti-recurrence measures designed to keep ineligible entries out of the salary system permanently.
Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Nyarko Ampem, speaking at the 2026 Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) Retreat in Koforidua on April 24, said a review of payroll data had uncovered widespread irregularities including duplicated entries, unverifiable records, and inconsistencies across multiple public sector institutions. Those anomalies had inflated the national wage bill and diverted resources that could have served national development priorities.
To prevent a return to those conditions, the government has introduced routine payroll audits, stricter approval processes for new recruits, closer coordination between public institutions, and digital tools to detect suspicious entries in real time. Ampem said the reforms were designed not only to reduce waste but to ensure that legitimate public sector workers receive accurate and timely salary payments.
He said the savings created by the exercise would open fiscal space for investment in education, healthcare, and infrastructure, and that a cleaner payroll database now gives government more reliable data for recruitment planning and workforce management.
The Koforidua retreat also heard from Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, who called on the CAGD to lead Ghana’s digital transformation of government accounting systems and warned that public institutions found misusing state funds would face tougher sanctions.
The payroll reforms have already produced measurable results beyond the central government payroll. The National Service Authority (NSA) reported in April that its annual payroll had fallen from approximately GH¢1.6 billion to GH¢700 million following a stricter verification process that required monthly assessments to pass through five levels of approval before payment is processed.
