The effects of Electronic Salary Paying Voucher System on Undeserved Salary Compensation of Employees within Ghana Education Service

Abstract

Ghana Education Service is believed to be the department with the highest level of undeserved compensations and other related payroll fraud. This is because the Auditor General Report (2018) noted that Ghana Education Service is the common department for the menace of Salary Grade Mismatches which included some 1,200 employees across board. This paper is born with the purpose of Assessing the Impact of the E-Salary Payment Voucher system and Payroll Headcounts/Audits in the elimination of Unauthorized Compensations in the two Kasena-Nankana Districts of Upper East Region of Ghana. Research questions for the study focused on the relationship between undeserved compensations which is the dependent variable and the independent variables include; payroll audits and the E-Salary Payment Voucher system. This study employed the fraud triangle theory as the basis for its experiment. The study also utilized the non-probability quota sampling method to select 102 users of the E-SPV system for a cross sectional survey in Ghana Education Service. Significant findings of the study include, validators or users of the E-SPV system are partly mandated to protect the public purse and hence the power to allow the prevalence of undeserved compensations is also in their hands. Recommendations emanating from the study seek to unpin that there should be an annual system audit of the Electronic Salary Payment Voucher at various management units to ensure that it reflects the true and fair view of the compensations given to staff at various cost centers in Ghana Education Service.