What Will Ghana Lose by Fully Decentralizing the Education Sector Payroll System? – Kofi Asare

The Executive Director of Ghana Education Watch, Kofi Asare, has questioned the intent behind successive Ghanaian governments’ entrenched stance against the idea of decentralizing the education sector payroll system.

“Eduwatch, Domelevo, and others have advocated a decentralized payroll system for years but no one cares… What at all would Ghana lose for fully decentralizing payroll management?” he asked in a Facebook post.

Concerns have been raised about the delayed payment of new teachers for close to a year, many due to payroll bureaucracy.

He finds decentralisation suitable for the sector as the Ghana Education Service (GES) has the largest number of public sector employees.

This, he said, has been adopted in other countries, with teacher payroll processing starting in the school and ending at the district level.

“The entire process lasts days, not weeks. This is much more relevant for the pre-tertiary education sector, where the GES employs over 300,000 staff; the largest in the public sector.”

According to him, decentralizing salary payment will curb payroll fraud or ghost names, while it takes just a day to verify everyone at the post in a district.

Source: opemsuo.com/ Hajara Fuseini