Huge wage bill: Fed Govt to raise panel on ghost workers

By Yusuf Alli 

Prof. Oladapo Afolabi

Worried by increasing wage bill and alleged high number of ghost workers, the Federal Government will soon raise a committee to ascertain the real figure of its workforce.

The government is suspecting that between 10 and 20 per cent of its workforce might be ghost workers.

Going by the declaration of the immediate past Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Prof. Oladapo Afolabi, there are about 120,000 workers in the Federal Civil Service.

But with the alleged smuggling of ghost workers into the payroll of the civil service, the staff strength figure could be about 100,000 or 80,000.

Investigation revealed that the government came into the conclusion of a bloated civil service with ghost workers following the findings of the pilot phase of its Integrated Personal Payroll Information System(IPPIS) which was introduced during the tenure of a former Accountant-General of the Federtion, Alhaji Ibrahim Dankwambo.

It was learnt that although 10 Ministries, Departments and Agencies(MDAs) were involved in the first or pilot phase of the IPPIS, the feedback was said to be mind-boggling.

According to findings, over 15 others had been captured in the second phase of the IPPIS with more shocking revelations and reduction in wage bill.

It was gathered that the feedback informed the decision of President Goodluk Jonathan to buy into the idea of raising a committee to fish out ghost workers in the system.

A government source, who spoke in confidence on the plan, said: “The government has discovered that there are ghost workers in the system and it will soon set up a committee to detect them.

“There is a strong suspicion that about 20 to 30 per cent of the present workforce in the Federal Civil Service might be ghost workers.

“It is unimaginable that the wage bill of the workforce is about N1.5trillion. Recent capturing of biometrics of some staff of some MDAs has confirmed that the staff strength might be bloated because of ghost workers.

“The President has decided to take the bull by the horn to ask a panel to verify and ascertain its real workforce. Look at the pension scheme, the scam uncovered at the Pensions Office proved that if we re-examine our roll system, we can rid the service of these ghost workers.”

A civil servant, who gave more insight into the phenomenon of ghost workers, said: “The challenge arose from a policy in the past which gave powers to coordinators of MDAs in all the 36 states to recruit staff within Grade levels 01-06.

“So, what some of these officers did was to embark on imaginary or fake recruitment of staff in order to jack up the payroll. And most often, the excess funds are diverted into private purse.

“The government has stopped the mass recruitment by MDAs at the state level until the system is sanitized after this coming stock-taking.

“The staff auditing is a welcome development if the government will have the courage to do so.”

The source also said with the IPPIS, “we now operate a centralized wage and staff records of some MDAs but not all workers have been integrated into this computerized system.

“The benefit of weeding out ghost workers is that the government can create new jobs and have a manageable workforce with reduced bill.”

SOURCE: The Nation, 19 December 2011. http://www.thenationonlineng.net