The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Dr Ransford Anertey Abbey, has hinted that a comprehensive staff payroll audit will soon be carried out to address inefficiencies and potential irregularities within the company.
The latest development comes on the back of major reforms being undertaken by Management to restore fiscal discipline and administrative efficiency in Ghana’s cocoa sector, which is saddled with a 33 billion Ghana cedis debt.
Speaking in a media interaction on TV3’s Hot Issues on Sunday, May 25, Dr Abbey revealed that COCOBOD currently employs over 10,000 staff with monthly emoluments amounting to $12m.
COCOBOD has a staff strength of over 10,000 employees across the country with close to $12m being used to pay salaries each month. In order to ensure accountability and minimize operational costs, the Management, led by myself will be commissioning a staff payroll audit to cross-check the data and ensure that there are no ghost names on the books of the company. The decision has been taken by Management, led by me to institute a staff payroll audit to check if all 10,000 staff are real human beings working for the company to rationalise our operational costs. he said.
When questioned on the financial stability of the company’s business model, Dr Abbey intimated that fiscal discipline and waste reduction will be the antidote to turning around the precarious fortunes of the company going forward.
Once financial discipline and waste reduction is embedded in our ethos as a company, we should be able to sort out our operational bottlenecks and improve our fortunes as a company in a very critical sector that holds the economy of Ghana afloat. he emphasized.
He attributed the company’s current position to the failure of past managers to implement a clear, workable strategy, as well as procurement breaches in acquiring goods and services for its operations.
Furthermore, Dr Abbey added that there are ongoing processes to address operational inefficiencies, including a special audit of stockpiled jute sacks and collaborative efforts with the National Investigations Bureau to trace over 200 missing containers of goods procured by the past Management of the company.
Story by: Sika Togoh | univers.ug.edu.gh
