The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has taken the management of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) to task after it emerged that the facility continued to pay a deceased staff member’s salary for more than two years.
According to the latest Auditor-General’s report, the hospital validated and paid salaries totalling GHS1.44 million to staff who were either dead, retired, or had left the service, with one deceased worker’s salary alone being paid for 26 months.
The revelation sparked outrage when TTH officials appeared before the PAC in Accra on Monday, September 29.
Director of Administration, Dr. Emmanuel Sena Kwasi Donkor, admitted that the hospital had so far managed to recover only GHS303,558.68, just 21 percent of the total amount.
“We’ve been able to retrieve some funds. Some banks have since stopped disbursing the payments after we engaged them,” he told the Committee. He also appealed for parliamentary backing to compel banks to transfer the remaining funds back into government accounts.
Dr. Donkor further disclosed that the names of all implicated persons have been forwarded to the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) for investigations.
But his explanation did little to calm Committee members, who questioned why the hospital’s validation process had failed to flag the anomaly.
Ranking Member Samuel Atta-Mills, visibly frustrated, said it was unacceptable that the hospital validated salaries for someone who had died in 2022.
“Didn’t anybody attend this person’s funeral? You validated a dead man for 26 months and now you’re asking Parliament to intervene?” he fumed.
PAC members have since directed the hospital to tighten its payroll controls and warned that weak validation systems continue to drain the public purse.
