Accountant-General's office says it paid all 6,079 teacher promotion cases sent to it, blames GES paperwork

Pinned summary · as of 04:56

The state payroll office, the Controller and Accountant-General's Department, reports that it has paid every teacher promotion case forwarded by the Ghana Education Service (GES), and that the remaining delay comes from missing documents. In a press release dated 27 September 2026, the CAGD answered complaints from the teacher unions GNAT, NAGRAT and PRETAG that promoted teachers have not been moved onto their new salary scales. The unions, for their part, dispute the department's account.

What we know

• The Controller and Accountant-General's Department issued a press release dated 27 September 2026 in response to complaints from GNAT, NAGRAT and PRETAG about delays in placing promoted teachers on the correct salary scales. The department said it acknowledged the concerns.
• According to the department, GES, as employer, must first carry out each promotion on the HRMIS platform and then send supporting papers to the department, which runs the IPPD2 payroll database and validates the change before pay is adjusted.
• The department said two items are needed for each case: a completed change-of-grade form that carries the signatures of an authorised preparer and an approver, and a copy of the letter given to the teacher. It described these as safeguards against fictitious promotions, unauthorised salary changes and irregular payments, not routine formalities.
• The department said a meeting on 31 August 2026, chaired by the Education Minister and attended by union representatives, GES leaders and its own team, settled that GES would hand over a full list of promoted staff, plus their letters and completed forms. That would let the department pay promotion arrears backdated to 1 January 2026.
• As of 22 September 2026, the department said, GES had sent 6,079 completed cases out of 58,620 expected. It said every one of the 6,079 had been processed and paid, arrears included, with the September 2026 salaries.
• The department said any payment still outstanding relates to cases for which GES has not yet supplied the documents, and that such cases stay suspended until the papers arrive and are validated. It promised to pay legitimate claims after that and offered to work with the Education Ministry, GES and the unions.
• The dispute is unfolding while the teacher unions are on strike, according to EducateGhana, and a government communications team member also appealed on Monday for the strike to be settled through cooperation.

What's disputed / unconfirmed

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  GNAT's national president, Prosper Tachie, told The Vaultz News that many of the 6,079 teachers the department says were paid have not received arrears, including some whose arrears were validated. This is his account alone and the department has not responded to it in these reports.
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  Mr Tachie put the number of teachers who passed the promotion examinations at more than 80,000, well above the department's 58,620, and said the unions later learned that only a little above 6,000 had been placed on their scales. Only The Vaultz News carries these figures.
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  Mr Tachie said the 31 August meeting agreed that every successful teacher would be placed on the appropriate rank, which differs from the department's description of a master-list-and-documents process. He also alleged that GES approached regional and district directors for fresh data, such as pay slips, and said GES missed a promised mid-August deadline for promotion letters. These claims have not been confirmed by other reports.
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  Richard Manuribe, of the Government Communications Team, said the government is ready to pay arrears to everyone among the 58,620 teachers listed, that the unions want automatic placement of everyone promoted, and that the Education Minister, the Controller and other agencies were meeting the unions in an emergency session. Only The Vaultz News reports his remarks.
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  EducateGhana reports that a 31 August communique between government and the unions set January 2026 as the effective date, called for all promoted teachers to be on their scales by September 2026 and provided for a supplementary payroll for anyone missed by the end of September. No other report carries the communique's wording.

Why it matters for Ghana

Thousands of teachers in classrooms across Ghana are waiting for higher pay they say they earned through promotion examinations, and the strike keeps pupils out of lessons in the meantime. The exchange between the payroll office and the unions shows how a paperwork gap between GES and the Accountant-General can hold up salaries. How many teachers are eligible, 58,620 or many more, will decide how large the arrears bill is and how long the standoff lasts.