June 10, 2025- Salaried workers in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region on Tuesday, June 10, expressed their frustration with the Ellembelle District Education Directorate over the organization of a district-wide payroll headcount by the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department. The exercise forms part of a payroll audit aimed at eliminating ghost names from the government payroll.
The headcount, which began on Monday, June 9, seeks to validate salaried workers in the Ghana Education Service (GES) and staff of the Ellembelle District Assembly.
The exercise, held at the Yinson Hall of Nkroful Agricultural Senior High School, has kept hundreds of workers particularly teachers waiting in long queues, forcing them to abandon their official duties and classroom responsibilities in their respective schools.
Many of the teachers traveled long distances from various communities within the district, yet some have still not been validated. As a result, they have had to neglect their teaching duties to participate in the exercise.
Teachers lamented that the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department was using only two laptop computers, which they said was woefully inadequate to process the large number of workers participating in the headcount.
This, they noted, caused significant stress, as many had spent the entire Monday and Tuesday commuting back and forth from their homes for the exercise.
The aggrieved teachers have called on the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department to provide more laptops for future exercises to speed up the process and reduce the burden on staff.
The Ellembelle District Director of Education, Mr. Wilfred Adoduadji, informed the teachers that the Controller’s staff would not be able to validate every worker by 5:00 p.m. GMT. However, he appealed to those gathered at Nkroful to meet the Controller’s team at Esiama Secondary Technical School the following day for the final session.
He indicated that if all workers could not be captured by the close of the next day, the team would consider extending the exercise by an additional day.
By Kodwo Nyamekeh
