NO PAYROLL AUDIT FOR ARMY

MBABANE – No matter how dedicated government can be in rooting out ghost employees in the public service, it cannot enumerate soldiers.

This is because the work of soldiers is a security issue and all information about them is not for public consumption. This transpired in the Public Service Payroll and Skills Audit where it was highlighted that the consultants struggled to enumerate and verify the payroll for the armed forces.
It is reflected in the report that 5 312 members from the Ministry of Defence, who include His Majesty’s Defence Forces, were not enumerated due to delays in securing the necessary authorisation from key stakeholders.

One of the recommendations in the report is that relevant authorisation had to be sought by the Ministry of Public Service in order for the uniformed members from the Ministry of Defence to be enumerated. “Civilians working within the Ministry of Defence should be enumerated together with the members who were not enumerated during the audit,” the report stated.
In an interview with the Ministry of Defence Principal Secretary (PS) Andreas Mathabela, he mentioned that it was actually an insult to demand information on the operations of soldiers.

“The Ministry of Defence was enumerated including the PS and other staff members. But with soldiers it was not allowed and this is for security reasons. You are not even allowed to know how many soldiers were trained and for what. At the army, we know we are the people who are there and we do want anyone to do an audit on the soldiers,” said Mathabela.
He mentioned that government was not privy to information on the courses that soldiers had to undergo in order for them to join the different ranks in the army. Mathabela was responding to a question if the non enumeration of soldiers was not going to promote corruption and lead to ‘ghost’ employees.

He mentioned that government was informed that it did not have a right to enumerate soldiers. “If someone wants to check on information on soldiers I will call that some sort of betrayal to the country’s security. The soldiers’ information on the payroll plus qualifications is no bounds because you do not even know their syllabus,” Mathabela said.
It has since transpired that prior to government making a call on radio (media), over 4 000 civil servants had not be accounted for.

This is the question that remains unanswered following the findings of the Public Service Payroll and Skills Audit Report June 2015, where it has been discovered that out of 37 075 members of the public service who were on the payroll on February 2014, about 4 510 were not enumerated as there was no information available on the payroll and skills audit database about their whereabouts.

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