Financial Secretary Deprives Civil Servants

By Musa Paul Feika

An anonymous source has revealed to this medium that, approximately, a total of 3,338 civil servants are yet to be paid since last year, due to the protracted delay of the Financial Secretary, Sahr Jusu Saffa, to sign a document presented to him after the completion of the biometric civil verification, which was conducted by the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA).

The signed document, which was tabled before Mr. Saffa, was to only give the go ahead to the office of the Accountant General to pay all the public sector workers who had followed government directives through a legal person (Deep Pool) at the office of the Administrator General.

It could be recalled that the first verification exercise was conducted on 10^th September, 2018 through the collaboration of the Ministry of Finance and the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA).

According to the Ministry of Finance, the verification exercise was purely to get rid of ghost workers within the government`s payroll and, by so doing, create a space for the government to employ the needed staff within the public sector in order to contribute to its development agenda.

According to NCRA findings, there were 6,328 names, including mismatch of names and inconsistencies of dates of birth of public sector workers. Based on the press release, from the Ministry of Finance, dated 11^th December, 2019, on the 30^th October, 2019 public sector workers were given an opportunity for them to show up for the verification exercise but a good number of them did not show up.

The release furthered that, out of 6,328 cases, including mismatch of names and dates of birth,  only 3,338 public sector workers showed up for the verification.

On the 11^th December, 2019, a press conference, held by the Ministry of Finance and chaired by the Finance Secretary, Sahr Jusu Saffa, in which these public workers were to collect their eight (8) months backlog payment in December last year, but it was rather unfortunate that it never materialized as only a few of them have been paid.

This has brought about untold suffering and economic hardship to many families. They are now calling on the government to look into their predicament.

This medium attempted, severally, to verify this issue by calling on (13^th October 2020 at 18:04) and texting (same day) the Financial Secretary, Sahr Jusu, but to no avail.