By NAKUBIANA MUMBUNA –
THE issue of ghost workers on Zambia’s payroll has been nagging for years while efforts to address the problem appears to be drawing blanks.
Early this year, the Secretary to the Cabinet Roland Msiska was shocked to learn that a health institution in Northern Province was said to have employed 44 workers who later turned out to be ghost workers.
Further, about 1,600 teachers this year had their salaries withheld on suspicion that they were ghost workers until recently when most of them were cleared.
Only 38 of them still have their details verified to confirm their status, according to the ministry of Education.
Apparently, the 2012 Auditor General’s Report revealed that the judicial service had about 17 people on its payroll when in fact they did not exist.
The 17 ghost workers were said to have received gross payment amounting to more than K275, 000.
There are many examples and revelations that have come to the fore in recent years and it is only important that necessary steps are taken to ensure that such abnormalities are eliminated or reduced significantly.
Admittedly, the problem appears not to be unique to Zambia. The lunch of the biometric register by the Kenyan government in an effort to eliminate ghost workers on its payroll explains how deep rooted the problem is in other countries as well.
While this is just the beginning, the biometric register is probably the system that Zambia could try to use in striking out ghost workers on its payroll.
Currently, officials in Kenya are recording identity details such finger prints verifying educational qualifications before any worker in that country is issued with a slip as proof of registration.
Biometrics is concerned with identifying a person based on his / her physiological or behavioral characteristics and these include fingerprints, face, eye (iris or retina), and speech recognition.
The exercise requires all public servants working in ministries, departments and agencies at the national and county governments to physically present themselves at the identification centres with original ID cards.
Public servants are also required to present duly completed biometric data forms, letter of first appointment, letter of the current substantive post, their current pay slips as well as birth certificate.
The biometric register is capable of readily matching employee data derived from the Integrated Personnel Payroll Data (IPPD) against the actual employees who will be required to present themselves in person for the biometric data capture.
This is different from Zambia were public workers are still being engaged manually with limited information about them that has also suffered poor record keeping.
This is the situation that has led to many people to continue receiving salaries years after leaving the civil service or those who don’t deserve to be paid.
Should Zambia also take a similar step to address the issue of ghost workers?
Admittedly, reports of ghost workers on the payroll are not new to Zambia and taking the Kenyan route could just prove to be a step in the right direction.
Economist, David Punabantu said the Zambian Government should take a similar step as the Kenyan Government in an effort to eliminate ghost workers on the Government payroll.
He noted that a lot of money which would otherwise be spent on other pressing issues was being diverted to pay the ghost workers.
Mr Punabantu further called for the decentralisation of the payroll.
“But apart from the biometric, there is also need to decentralise the formation of the payroll because it is difficult to control it from Lusaka,” he said.
Yusuf Dodia, another economist says it is important for the Zambian Government to use information technology to address the issue of ghost workers.
Mr Dodia explained that the chances of any worker remaining on the payroll after retiring or dismissal are very minimal with the use of the biometric system.
“Addressing the issue of ghost workers on a payroll is quite difficult when things are done manually,” he said.
“So the accountant general together with his team can address these issues by employing new systems compounded by regular audits.”
Mr Dodia said resolving the issue of ghost workers on the payroll would certainly help reduce on the drain of public resources.
Mike Mweemba, a resident of Lusaka in his contribution observed that although it would be costly to implement, the biometric register would be beneficial in the long run.
“As a country, we just have to move forward and embrace new technologies, we just have to move with the changing times,” he said.
It is worth noting that a biometric property is extremely difficult to duplicate or share it and adopting the system could save the country million of Kwacha.
Many countries have used it with success. Nigeria is currently using the system and has managed to help in accurately identify half of a million federal civil service employees and remove all ghost workers from the payroll system.
With the biometric system, Zambia could be able to exclusively identify, virtually eliminate duplicate registration in any form and eradicate ghost worker payroll fraud that has been experienced in the past.