THE GHOSTS CAN’T SUFFER ALONE

(Comment)

The net is finally closing on the so-called ghost employees’ on the government payroll following the Public Service Payroll and Skills Audit exercise launched three years ago.

 Hundreds of civil servants are said to have suddenly disappeared, prompting a decision to freeze their salaries next month until they show their face and credentials to the ‘ghost busters’.

The exercise was launched by the Prime Minister, Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini, in 2013 when it became apparent that government was overstaffed by about  7 000 employees on its wage bill. This followed advice by the International Monetary Fund which found the country’s wage bill too high for its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In his speech during the launch, the premier said this was an important exercise that would assure the country that any irregularities were removed and systems tightened while ensuring that government tackled its public service delivery responsibilities with the appropriate skills in place.  Basically, this exercise is a serious indictment on the government staff recruitment structures.

Who hired the ‘ghosts’ in the first place and how do you explain not knowing where the person hired can be found? Why does government have to issue a radio announcement to look for its employees? Surely they should be just be a phone call away to the supervisors wherever they are deployed. As with all things in government, it is always the small fish that get to fry. If there is any freezing of salaries to be done it should start with all those involved in the hiring and supervision of non-existent staff.

These ‘ghost handlers’ also deserve to be taken through disciplinary processes and sued to recover the taxpayer’s money that was used to pay the salaries of all the people (and corpses) who should never have been given a job in the first place.

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