The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has given two management members of the National Identification Authority (NIA) one month to refund GH¢98,760.20 paid as penalty for late transfer of staff Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) contributions.
The Executive Secretary of NIA, Prof. Ken Attafuah, and Reverend Dr Sebastian Baba Azumah, Director of Finance, NIA, are the officials ordered to pay back the money within the given period.
Chairman of PAC, Dr James Klutse Avedzi, gave the order in Accra yesterday, after the committee rejected the explanation provided by the two officials for the late transfer of contributions to SSNIT, which led to the penalty imposition.
The two had appeared before the committee to respond to an infraction by NIA captured in the 2022 Auditor General’s report.
The report noted that contrary to section 117 of the Income Tax Act, 2015 (Act 896), due to late transfer of deductions of staff SSF contributions to SSNIT, the Authority paid an amount of GH¢98,760.20 as penalty to SSNIT.
“We recommended the Chief Director should ensure that the penalty paid amounting to GH¢98,760.20 is recovered from the Chief Executive Officer and the Financial Controller and same paid into the Auditor-General’s Recoveries Account at Bank of Ghana, failing which the amount should be recovered from the Chief Director,” it added.
Responding to questions on the infraction, Prof. Attafuah said the penalty imposed was due to delay in release of funds for the payment of salaries to contract staff between January and March 2022.
He explained that the release was insufficient to take care of both the three months salary in arrears and statutory payment including SSNIT contributions.
The management, he said prioritied the payment of the salaries when the release was accessed in April 2022 because the staff were agitated and threatened to suspend work although the Authority was undertaking mass registration to enable them register their SIMS card.
“We were not in a position to make the payment due to lack of funds, Mr Chairman, the management was faced with making a decision on the payment of salaries because there were agitations in the field.
At the time, there was so much pressure on NIA due to the SIM card registration and we had to set up various centres to be able to cope with the pressure. We couldn’t have continued to delay the salaries of the workers when the staff were agitated,” Prof. Attafuah stated.
He said the SSNIT contribution was transferred in May 2022 when the second tranche of funds was released.
Rev. Dr Azumah appealed to the committee to consider the explanation of management because the Authority faced difficult circumstances that required that the workers were remunerated on time to ensure the mass registration exercise was not stalled.
BY CLAUDE NYARKO ADAMS
