A number of government ministries have launched internal investigations after false names were discovered on their payroll. A growing number of “ghost workers” are turning up on the government payroll as the government enclave rolls out the new Oracle human resource management system.
The Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) confirmed this week that as at June 2014, a total of 52 ghost workers had been discovered on the government payroll, 21 of whom were in the Ministry of Health. The number is expected to go up as the Oracle system is rolled out to other ministries.
DPSM Chief Public Relations Officer Osesenaga Lekgoko told The Sunday Standard that 29 other ghost workers turned up on the payroll of three ministries which she did not mention, whilst two were from the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Responding to a questionnaire from the Sunday Standard, Lekgoko said payment of salaries to the ghost employees was immediately stopped and affected ministries are investigating with a view to take appropriate action which includes recovering the money. She explained that the roll out of the Oracle Human Resources (HR) system was ongoing. She said the system was implemented to ensure “clean” personnel records within the Public Service.
She further stated that it has always been anticipated that in implementing the Oracle HR System, anomalies would be identified as records had been manually created and maintained and thus susceptible to errors. Lekgoko said that the Oracle HR system will ensure that Government has up to date and accurate records of its employees, as it keeps all the personnel data and history of government employees in a computerised format. It is also interfaced with Omang and integrated to the Payroll system hence information sharing between Government systems is enhanced.
The DPSM Public Relations Officer said the system will enable better management of the government establishment of one employee one post and it also comes with an effective tool to control and monitor the establishment as it allows only one employee to occupy one post, and ultimately will not pay anyone who is not attached to an established post. The system has in built control mesures to guard against anomilies and can be easily monitored as it is computerised.
