Mpumalanga treasury has begun their process of verifying over 80 000 employees on the personal and salary system (PERSAL) in the provincial government to eliminate possible ghost workers. The staff verification, which is conducted by means of biometric fingerprint system, aims to establish the authenticity of employees against the PERSAL system.
This comes after a revelation of alleged ghost workers in municipalities such as Mangaung Municipality, Greytown’s Umvoti Municipality and Msunduzi Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, where it was found to have between 50 and 100 ghost workers, amongst others in the past few years.
The verification process of over 83 187 employees which began in March aims to establish the authenticity of employees and find all the names of ghost workers, of which salaries are paid and they do not exist. The process is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Vusi Mkhatshwa, the MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism said the staff verification project was one of the major expenditure control measures which are aimed at ensuring credibility of the provincial budget management.
“The principal objective of this exercise is to ensure that public funds are paid to existing personnel who are contributing to the functioning of the provincial government,” he said.
The budget allocated to the provincial treasury for the 2022/23 financial year is over R566 million.
Source: IOL, All Africa, image from Twitter