The appellation “ghost” heaped on the phenomenon where inactive or nonexistent employees of the public service remain pinned almost perpetually to Government payroll has been justifying itself. The campaign to grab and jerk “ghost” names from Government payroll has proven elusive for so long, perhaps because “ghost”, by nature, is a ghost—unseen. But it seems things are dawning on the ghosts on government payroll with the introduction of multiple scientific measures from a horde of line ministries and agencies. At a recent workshop, the Government brainstormed thoroughly and the dragnet is steadily edging on the vampire, as The Analyst reports.
The Interagency Payroll Clean-up Task Force has started a validation workshop at the Ministerial Complex in Congo Town in Monrovia. The effort is aimed at removing of ghost employees from the GoL Payroll through the use of the biometric enrollment for all government employees and other efforts.
The workshop is organized to compile and validate the National Biometric Identification Cards of Government employees across the country, according to a release, which added that “the objective of the validation is to ensure all Government employees are bio-metrically verified before receiving salary payment beginning July 2020.”
The release stated further: “In view of this objective, the Taskforce is encouraging all spending entities that have not submitted NIR cards of their employees to submit hardcopies of the IDs or send email to the payroll team for verification and processing. Equally, the Taskforce advised individual employees who have just only processed their NIR cards to also drop copy to our team at the Ministerial Complex, in Congo Town.”
The Taskforce Chairperson, Mr. Del-Francis Wreh of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, said during the workshop that the exercise is an approved mandate of Cabinet since March 2020, which enforcement has been delayed due to the outbreak and spread of COVID19. Mr. Wreh assures that despite COVID19 and the existing health protocols including social distancing, the Taskforce through its consultation with its members and stakeholders have revised its implementation and enforcement strategies, ensuring full compliance to the health protocols.
Honorable James Thompson, Acting Director General of the Civil Service Agency, and also member of the Payroll Clean-up Taskforce is also encouraging the public and government employees to support the enforcement of “NO NIR NO PAYMENT” by acquiring and submitting their national biometric identification. Their compliance and support according to Honorable Thompson will help sustainably clean the government payroll and create the necessary fiscal space to finance more pro-poor programs and development in Liberia.
The Interagency National Payroll Clean up Taskforce comprised of the Civil Service Agency (CSA), Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), Internal Audit Agency (IAA) and the National Identification Registry (NIR).
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