Ghosts evicted, GH₵900 million saved: NSA slashes payroll by more than half, without cutting a single serving person.
The National Service Authority (NSA) has cut its annual payroll from about GH₵1.6 billion to about GH₵700 million by making it harder to verify names and get rid of fake ones. During an interview on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Lieutenant Colonel Moses Dok Nach Kpeungu, the Deputy Director General of Operations, said that this drop shows that the reforms that are still going on are working. He made it clear that the savings came not from cutting the number of service members but from making the controls over the processing and payment of monthly allowances stronger. Before the Controller and Accountant General’s Department gives final approval for payment, each service person’s monthly evaluation must be signed off on by a supervisor, checked at the district level, reviewed by an internal auditor, cleared by the regional director, and reconciled by accountants at the NSA head office. He said that the process is complicated, but he insisted that it is all digital and has not caused any major delays in payments. The NSA only owes its employees one month’s pay, which he said was manageable. The NSA spends about GH₵50 million a month on pay for its nearly 99,500 service members across the country. That’s about GH₵600 million a year.
