NO PAY FOR 3 194 ‘UNKNOWN’ GOVT EMPLOYEES

MBABANE – Illusionary civil servants will not get their remuneration at the end of the month. This follows that the Ministry of Public Service has ordered all principal secretaries to verify personnel in their charge in the quest to account for the 3 194 civil servants who cannot be accounted for.

The revelation that there were public servants unaccounted for, among the offices of the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, 19 ministries and other departments came to the fore in the submissions made by the Ministry of Public Service, in its annual performance report for the financial year 2018/19.

There are 18 ministries in the country headed by ministers and the Ministry of Defence has the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Thuli Dladla, as its acting political head. The unaccounted for civil servants are referred to as ‘ghost employees’ which is a term that means someone recorded on the payroll system; but can’t be located at the organisation he/she is drawing the salary from.

ghost

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) defines ghost employees as ‘someone recorded on the payroll system, but who does not work for the business’. This can either refer to a real person, placed knowingly or unknowingly on the company’s payroll, or it could be a fictitious employee.

Christian Ntshangase, the Minister of Public Service, said he had already issued letters to the 21 principal secretaries to enumerate the personnel in their various ministries, failing which; government shall freeze remunerating the unaccounted for employees. Ntshangase said this decision came after the failure by ministries to account for all personnel being salaried by government. He said while his ministry was in the process of implementing the recommendations of the Public Service Payroll and Skills Audit Report, there were 4 510 none enumerated public servants.

The minister said the list of the employees was sent to the various ministries to account and verify their reasons for absence during the audit. Following this, only 1 316 civil servants had their status accounted for by their ministries. In essence, this means that government needs to clean its payroll in order to be certain that all those who were in the wage bill deserved to be paid.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: