Our attention has been drawn to a media publication by the Fourth Estate making several allegations against former officers of the National ServiceAuthority.
The publication, is laden with a misapprehension of the enrolment, verification and payment processes of the National Service Authority, as well as selective omission of information, calculated to
achieve contrived conclusions of imputing wrong doing to former
officers. We respond to the various claims as follows:
1. The publication claims that the figures submitted to parliament for
budgetary purposes are significantly different from what is
available to the public. Our checks reveal that the claim is palpably
misleading as the Fourth Estate only relies on figures from the
general posting done in September without including two (2)
cohorts of Nursing trainees and one (1) cohort of Teacher Trainees.
2. It must be noted, that in addition to the general enrolment cycle by
the Authority, the NSA in partnership with the Nursing and
Midwifery Council runs an enrolment cycle for nurses with the
same being done for teachers in partnership with the Teachers
Council.
The shortfalls in the figures are therefore accounted for
from these other enrolment cycles. The claim by the Fourth Estate is
therefore without any basis, which fact would have been apparent
to them had the exercise any diligence in their purported investigations.
3. The Fourth Estate relies on the above disparity to claim that the NSA
payroll has been padded with “Ghosts” because monies allocated
by Parliament exceed verified postings. Instructively, submissions
of personnel list to parliament for budgetary purposes are based on
the total personnel posted by the Authority. However, in practice,
not all persons posted end up on the payroll owing to varying
reasons including failing verification and failure to show up for the
service.
4. The payroll is thus only activated following stringent verification
processes and only personnel who pass the verification process are
paid through the GhiPPS System, a Bank of Ghana subsidiary
system. Even then, the payment is only made after monthly
validations that confirm that personnel are at their respective postings. Any surplus sums after payments by GhiPPS are left in the Authority’s account for subsequent use.
The publication by Fourth Estate is therefore false in suggesting simply because monies allocated by parliament exceed verified postings, some “ghosts” are drawing pay.
5. The Fourth Estate further claims that the NSA system is full of people who are overaged, bear foreign pictures and wrong IDs.
Based on these, the Fourth Estate concludes yet again, that these are
ghosts drawing pay from the NSA. This is a clear misapprehension
of the enrolment, verification and payment systems of the NSA.
Educational Institutions provide an initial data of eligible persons
for national service without any input from the Authority. Private
persons are also entitled to register for national service with the
Authority.
6. Such entry data is often ridden with several errors including the
kind described by the Fourth Estate since there is no other data to
cross-reference it with and unscrupulous persons always attempt to
override the Authority’s system every enrolment cycle. However,
during the regional verification process, which all personnel are
required to undergo in person, personnel provide identification
information including Identification cards, facial biometric and
finger biometric data.
This information is cross-referenced with the initial data submitted and personnel with inconsistent information
are categorised as banned or made to pend awaiting verification.
7. Any personnel failing verification remains in the system under the
banned, on hold or pending category, but becomes ineligible to be
paid hence does not draw from the payroll.
Majority of rejections happen at this stage and in point of fact, the several images, allegations of foreign nationals and placeholder images provided by
the Fourth Estate are within this category of fraudulent attempts to beat the NSA System.
8. It is therefore shocking, that considering the standing of the Fourth
Estate as a media outlet, they would rely on these entry data without ascertaining from GhiPPS (the paying entity), the actual number of personnel paid per year and whether any of these persons with such inconsistent information actually received allowances from the NSA .
This betrays the malicious intent of the purported investigation by the Fourth Estate, as merely calculated to hurriedly publish a sensational story to smear former officers, rather than diligently
establish the facts as expected of a decent media house.
10.Throughout our tenure, we committed to implementing robust enrolment and verification mechanisms to reduce the occurrences of unscrupulous attempts to circumvent the system.
One of such important systems was the development of a common portal and
the generation of unique access codes to institutions for the submission of their enrolment data in order to reduce the likelihood of manipulation at the entry point.
The publication by the Fourth Estate must therefore be treated with the
contempt it deserves as it is a manifest example of how the misapprehension of data and institutional processes may result in conclusions that misinform and mislead the general public.
We urge journalists to stay true to their creed and be thorough in their
work to avoid publishing sensational stories that malign individuals
without basis.
Finally, we welcome the directive by President Mahama for an
investigation, as we are certain the investigation will reveal that the true
state of affairs on the matters published are contrary to the contrived
allegations by the Fourth Estate.
Thank you.
SIGNED
1. Osei Assibey Antwi
Former Director-General
National Service Authority
2. Hon. Mustapha Ussif
Former Executive Director
National Service
