The Auditor General, Mr Daniel Domelevo who made this known said heads have a responsibility to ensure that the people who are supposedly employed in their institutions were real and not “ghosts.”

“You are given time for repentance and you yourselves must clean the employee rolls up before our people come and detect it,” he said.

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He said it was worrying that half of Ghana’s total revenue is used to pay less than one million Ghanaians and that is why many others are living in poverty “and that is why the ghosts have to be removed,” he stated.

He was speaking at the launch of the National Payroll and Personnel Verification Audit at Elmina on Monday.

The exercise will start from July 17 to July 27 2018.

In the Central region, a total of 51,000 workers are expected to be verified at various points to be set up in the various district capitals.

Mr Domelevo said it was not right that despite Ghana’s many resources, many people continue to live in abject poverty.

He stated that contract jobs for personnel above age 60 was also costing government a lot of money while worsening unemployment.

“They take their pensions and salaries too while many young graduates stay home,” he noted adding that “if you are 60 years it is time to go home.”

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He said the service would ensure professionalism in the verification process to ensure that genuine people were unduly victimized or unjustly treated.

Mr George Winful, Deputy Auditor General said about Ghc5.4 billion was saved in 2016 due to the validation exercise that year and called on all government agencies to cooperate to make it successful.

The Central Regional Minister, Mr Kwamina Duncan called for coordinated efforts of all actors to ensure that be the end of the exercise the pay roll would be clean.