By Tabora Bojang
The Minister of Public Service Baboucarr Bouy yesterday informed the National Assembly that a total sum of D23,976,258 was paid as three months’ salaries to ghost workers at three ministries, Basic Education, Health and Agriculture.
He explained that these monies were paid through 16 financial institutions to 1430 staff who could not be identified at these three ministries.
The minister added that his ministry, through the Accountant General’s Department, attempted to recover these monies but only D2 million has been recovered so far.
“We have not relented pursuing these monies through some of the financial institutions leading to the freezing of their affected customers’ accounts but many banks have reported that most of the funds had been withdrawn before our directive came to freeze their accounts.
So they could not refund the remaining funds in the affected accounts,” the minister told NAMs during question time.
He gave an example of a certain bank that received over D7 million but could only refund D1.6 million to the Treasury since the rest of the money, amounting to over D5 million, had already been withdrawn by the account holders.
“Some banks even insisted they must have the consent of their customers or a court order to be able to release the available funds. So we had to write to the Solicitor General to intervene and obtain us a court order to be able to recover these funds from the financial institutions. But given our resolve to recover these funds, legal actions will eventually be instituted against these individuals if necessary,” he assured.
