Regional Directors have been directed to make sure that designated validators in their jurisdictions are briefed in advance and ready to validate salaries as soon as the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) opens its validation window, so that payment can be made by October 16, 2026.
The directive came from Management in a memo titled “Urgent Validation of Salaries for Payment by 16th October 2026.” It describes the exercise as urgent and time-bound and asks directors to monitor the process closely so that no undue delays occur.
The memo asks Regional Directors to ensure that all designated validators within their respective jurisdictions are adequately informed ahead of time. The aim is for validation to start immediately when the CAGD opens the window.
The instruction centres on readiness. Validators are expected to begin work the moment the window opens, so directors must prepare their teams before it does.
GES
Directors Charged with Oversight
Beyond preparing validators, the memo gives Regional Directors a supervisory role. They are to track the exercise in their regions and act to prevent hold-ups.
“You are therefore requested to monitor the process closely and ensure that no undue delays occur.”
GES
This places responsibility for each region’s progress on its director. Validators carry out the checks, while directors answer for the pace of the work. Under the payroll process the CAGD has described employers such as the Ghana Education Service (GES) work on the Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS), while the CAGD administers the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database 2 (IPPD2).
The CAGD says employer documentation must reach it for validation before payroll processing, and that these documents act as safeguards against fictitious promotions, unauthorised salary adjustments and irregular payments.
A record that has not been validated therefore cannot be cleared for payment. That is why the memo treats the validation window as the point on which the October 16 date turns.
October 16 in Context
The date in the memo matches a target already set by government. The Ghanaian Times reported that government set October 16, 2026, as the target for paying the first tranche of arrears owed to promoted teachers, after GES validated at least 51,000 promotion records and submitted them to the CAGD. The Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, announced the date during a visit to a data processing centre in Accra.
The CAGD has also published figures on the scale of the exercise. It said that as of September 22, 2026, GES had submitted 6,079 completed input forms and promotion letters out of an expected 58,620 cases, and that all 6,079 had been processed and paid with arrears in the September salaries.
While the Controller and Accountant-General, Kwasi Agyei, said the CAGD had processed 52,000 promotion records. He said validation should finish by October 12 or 13, and that cleared records would be paid on or before October 16 through a supplementary payroll. Records processed after that date would be included in the November salary.
Short Window for Regional Teams
With payment due on October 16, the time between the window opening and the deadline is brief. Mr. Agyei’s own timetable puts the end of validation at October 12 or 13, which leaves little room for a region that starts late.
That explains the memo’s emphasis on advance preparation. Validators who are already briefed can begin at once, while those who learn of the exercise after the window opens risk losing days that the schedule cannot spare.
The same logic explains the instruction to monitor closely. A delay in a single region can hold back the records tied to it, and early supervision is the means of catching such delays before they affect the payment date.
The next step is the opening of the validation window by the CAGD. Once it does, validators across the regions are expected to start immediately, with Regional Directors tracking progress.
If validation is finished in time, payment can proceed by October 16. If it is not, the timetable in the memo will be at risk. Further instructions are expected from the CAGD and from Management as the exercise gets under way
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