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8,000 workers deleted from government payroll
Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga (R)receives reports on the public accounts of Uganda for 2012/ 13 financial year from Auditor General John Muwanga (C) at Parliament recently. Looking on is deputy AG, Ms Keto Nyapendi Kayemba. Photo by Geoffrey Sseruyange.
What you need to know:
The act follows findings by M/s Ernst and Young, a private firm hired by the AG to audit the government payroll that the names are actually ‘ghosts’.
Kampala
The Auditor General (AG) has released a partial report that highlights weaknesses on the government payroll system and confirms deletion of more than 8,000 ghost employees.
Assistant Auditor General Keto Nyapendi last Wednesday told a Select Committee of Parliament investigating delays in payment of civil servants’ salaries that findings by M/s Ernst and Young, a private firm hired by the AG to audit the government payroll, confirmed 8,229 ghost names and recommended that they be deleted from the payroll.
She said as of May 20, Ernst and Young had validated 34 per cent of the payroll and that the work, which started in December last year, is expected to end in August. The partial report shows that the government saved Shs3.74 billion between February and April. Ms Nyapendi said: “There is no illegal deletion, we have carefully verified the records and recommended the deletion of 8,229 employees.”
Early this year this matter came to the floor of Parliament and the Minister for Finance, Ms Maria Kiwanuka, told the House that they had deleted 9,000 and that the ongoing payroll cleaning exercise was expected to save about Shs70 billion.
Ministry of Finance Spokesperson Jim Mugunga told the Daily Monitor: “The partial disclosure from Ernst and Young is a confirmation of our fears that the payroll has problems. The payroll is not clean and we are trying to rectify the problem. We asked the Auditor General to undertake the exercise and a solution will be found and as a government, we will act on the AG recommendations.”
Junior minister for Public Service Sezi Mbaguta declined to comment on how the ghosts came to be on the payroll. She said it would be unfair for her and her ministry to comment on what transpired in a meeting with the Auditor General.
The Select Committee chaired by Jack Sabiiti (FDC, Rukiga), was put into place by Speaker Rebecca Kadaga two weeks ago in the wake of the endless complaints from legislators that an estimated 9,000 public sector employees, especially police officers, nurses and teachers, had gone for months without pay and others were receiving half pay without explanation.
Officials from Auditor General’s office revealed that there was connivance leading to abuse right from the districts to the central government. The partial report confirmed delays in enrolling new employees on the payroll, which the auditors said in turn culminates into salary arrears. There are also delays in the submission of pay change reports by accounting officers and slow submission from the ‘old legacy system” to the Integrated Personnel Payroll System (IPPS).
The Auditor General also presented to the committee findings of a separate report titled: Special Audit of the Government of Uganda Salaries and Wages, which was released in June 2012. This report, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, revealed that the annual loss, in respect of exceptions identified on the payroll as at June 2011, stood at Shs34 billion. This finding was based on the results of a sample covering 54 per cent of the government employees on the payroll.
Anomalies
According to MPs on the committee of Parliament investigating delays in payment of civil servants salaries, some of the Auditor General’s findings include duplicate names on the payroll, errors in dates of birth, bank account numbers used by more than one person, retired employees on the payroll, and inaccurate data of present appointment, among other anomalies.
