Various public institutions are faced with the problem of ghost workers and those found in the wrong will face the music.
The Mpumalanga finance department has embarked on a process of verifying its over 80 000 workers in search of possible ghost workers.
The process is expected to be complete end of June 2022, finance MEC Vusi Mkhatshwa has said.
The verification process is also one of the measures undertaken to ensure expenditure control, Mkhatshwa said.
In KZN and Free State, various municipalities like Umvoti and Mangaung were found to have harboured ghost workers.
A ghost worker is someone who is getting paid monthly by the government but doesn’t come to work or do the actual work.
It can also refer to a real person who has died or otherwise left the institution but their salaries are still being paid out.
The process will therefore establish the authenticity of government workers on the PERSAL system using the fingerprint system. Those who don’t make it on the fingerprint system will be declared ghost workers and investigations will be conducted into how they got into the system.
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The Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) has investigated 3000 ghost workers.
“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.
(edited by ZK)
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