Following The Fourth Estate’s publication on the latest Auditor-General report on nationwide payroll irregularities, the Audit Service now says the GHS427 million attributed to Mr Frank Oliver Kpodo, a former Director of Procurement at the Ministry of Defence, was a transpositional error.

According to a statement issued by the Service and signed by its Right to Information Officer, Frederick Lokko, the actual figure in Mr Kpodo’s name is GHS 422,920.01. 

According to the Audit Service, it made an error in attributing the figure to Mr Kpodo.

“We offer our most sincere and unreserved apologies to Mr. Frank Oliver Kpodo for the distress and unwarranted public scrutiny this error may have caused,” the statement said. “We further extend our apologies to the Government and people of Ghana, and the Controller and Accountant-General for the transpositional error noted above.”

The Audit Service further explained that the figure originally attributed to Mr. Kpodo should rather have been in the name of the Ministry of Education.

“We wish to state that the amount attributed to Mr Kpodo above was due to a transpositional error. The GHC427,995,661.40 relates to the Ministry of Education in respect of 3,476 unaccounted staff during the payroll audit,” the statement said.

Also, the Audit Service produced a corrected table of 34 Ministries and Departments that could not account for over GHS800 million paid to their staff.

In the corrected list, The Fourth Estate has found that the Audit Service made several “transpositional” errors in the original report, which has been submitted to parliament. 

Figures attributed to 27 of the 34 Ministries and Departments in the original report have been changed.

Meanwhile, in a separate statement, the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department says it is impossible for any government employee to receive unearned salaries.

Following the development and the corrections made by the Auditor General in its Audit report, which formed the basis of the orginal story by The Fourth Estate, we have taken down the original publication.