By Kei Emmanuel Duku
Government of South Sudan is losing substantial funds due to widespread “ghost” employees on its payroll.
Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), Edmond Yakani noted this due to deteriorating economy, saying fictitious employees are siphoning off critical resources of the country
According to Yakani, the practice bears substantial impact on essential service delivery and hinders national development.
CEPO called for an immediate audit of the civil service payroll to identify and eliminate fraudulent entries.
Yakani made these remarks following a commitment issued last week by Dr. Benjamin Bol Mel, Vice President in charge of the Economic Cluster, who promised that civil servants and organized forces would receive their salaries by the 24th of each month.
The CEPO Director stated that some ghost names exist within the organized forces, and the presence of staff who have been laid off but are still considered under pension is negatively impacting the country’s budget.
Yakani further accused certain senior government officials of using ghost names to siphon funds from the public treasury, claiming that the funds are necessary for operations, despite there being no legitimate operational costs.
“This is malpractice and it’s not true, it is corruption, those ghost names require proper and timely responses and genuine screening without any fear or favor, they exist in various public payment systems be it in the law enforcement agencies or other civil servants payroll you’ll find a lot of ghost names,” said Yakani.
South Sudan Civil Servants have not been paid their salaries in the past year and Yakani said irregular payment of civil servants has resulted in underperformance with government employees seeking alternative sources of income to be able to sustain their families.
In last week’s meeting between President Kiir and the Vice for Economic Cluster, Dr. Bol Mel assured all government employees that plans are underway to start paying staff salaries in March while other outstanding arrears.
However, Yakani stated that it would not be logical to pay acclimated arrears in bits, especially with the old government payment structure.
He said as a result of delayed salaries some of the law enforcement agencies have deserted their duties and resorted to an alternative source of income mainly the resort to the business of charcoal burning which activities already impact negatively on our environment.
“There is a need to improve the government’s performance regarding payment of civil servants’ salaries and the clearance of the salary arrears and I hope that the salary areas should be cleared in one paid-off payment so that at least now we talk of new salary structures but most importantly there’s a need to improve the regular payment of civil servants salaries,” he added.
The CEPO Director further stated that there are some staff in the government payroll whose ages have reached retirement and are contributing less to the country’s productivity and they are still on the government payroll.
Yakani said to reduce government expenditures, the Economic Cluster under Vice President Dr. Bol Mel should consider taking critical decisions on how to handle the issues of ghost names concurrently with staff on pension, to reduce unnecessary spending.
“The issue of pension of people who no longer have an energy of performance or they have surpassed the working age and the performance is very low they receive money but they produced less, it need thorough screening from the government payroll if done well it will allow the government to have little income that can be used strategically to pay a productive workforce,” he concluded.