Govt stops salaries for 3 000 workers

THE Government will from this month stop depositing salaries into bank accounts of more than 3 000 "ghost" workers, following a Civil Service Commission audit whose results were made public last week. The audit, carried out last year, unearthed that there were 3 307 ghost workers on the Government payroll costing treasury $21 134 400 in salaries annually.

In an interview on Friday, the Deputy Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Tapuwa Matangaidze, said the move was in line with recommendations made in the audit. "I don't have the exact figures with me right now but I can confirm that we have just terminated contracts for a little over

3 000 ghost workers. We have since instructed the Salary Service Bureau to stop disbursing salaries into the accounts of these ghost workers," he said. According to the audit report the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education had the highest number of ghost workers at 2 207 followed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development which had 448.

The Ministry Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment had 152 ghost workers, Higher and Tertiary Education 123, Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development 81, Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare 70, Ministry of Home Affairs 65, Ministry of Mines and Mining Development 50, Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development 22 and the Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement 15.

Eleven ghost workers were unearthed in the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 10 in the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, eight in the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises, while the Ministries of Environment, Finance, Industry and Information and Communication Technology each had seven ghost workers.

The Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs had five ghost employees, Sports and Recreation four, Defence three, Tourism and Hospitality three while Foreign Affairs had two.

The audit report also revealed that there were duplication of duties in Government, overstaffing and wrong deployment of some civil servants, recommending a raft of measures to correct the anomalies. It further showed that schools were overstaffed by 5 588 teachers, costing Government more than $33 million every year. The recommendations proposed by the audit report, if implemented, will save Government over $400 million annually.

Matangaidze said the Government was working on implementing the recommendations of the report but ruled out retrenchment of Government workers. He said his ministry was coming up with a new organisational structure for the civil service which will enable Government to quantify the extent of duplication and overstaffing, with the view of redeploying staff to areas where they can be fully utilised.

"Certainly we are not going to retrench. No one will lose their job in the civil service. Right now we are working on coming up with an organisational structure to avoid duplication, idleness as well as deal with vacancies. We need to ascertain and quantify the extent of the duplication and overstaffing first then work on getting people to areas where they can be fully utilised," he said.

The audit report also revealed that about 13 000 people have been rendering service to Government but are not captured on the payroll, creating an obligation of about $84 million yearly in salary arrears. Also claimed in the report is that there are 121 agricultural extension workers deployed in urban areas where there were no posts for such activities. Matangaidze refused to comment on the matter saying the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development was better placed to comment.

Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta) president, who is also a member of the Apex council Mr Richard Gundani said civil servants were angered by the issue of ghost workers in the civil service.

"If there are people not employed by Government but are receiving salaries which they don't deserve, that is bad. Such leakages should be plugged immediately. We will certainly not be pleased with a situation where people who are not civil servants get salaries from Government," he said.

The Government is working on plugging leakages as part of efforts to reduce its salary bill which accounted for about 83 percent of the National Budget in 2015. Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week told a visiting International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation that Government intends to cut its wage bill to about 52 percent of expenditure by 2019 to improve fiscal discipline.