BY DAYO ADESULU
No fewer than 70,000 ghost workers have been discovered since the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the Federal Government has said.
This is just as the Federal Government also vowed not to pay lecturers who have not registered with the IPPIS their February salaries.
Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning stated this on Thursday while addressing newsmen at the opening of the 2020 Management Retreat for Treasury Directors of Finance and Directors of Internal Audit in Kano.
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She said: “I know that we have up to 70,000 ghost workers that have been identified in this process and we hope that we will come to a time when we will say that we have no ghost workers.”
Ahmed said the introduction of IPPIS would definitely make the system free from fraud and ghost workers.
Speaking on the level of compliance among the universities lecturers, Ahmad said about 55 per cent members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had registered in IPPIS.
She also declared that lecturers yet to be captured in the IPPIS won’t be paid February salary.
She said: “Unfortunately, most reforms that you undertake you come across resistance. ”We have had resistance from ASUU on the implementation of the IPPIS and I am happy to report that, at least, up to 55 per cent of ASUU members are registered and are the ones that are getting their February salary.
Mr Olufehinti Olusegun, Director, Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), had said the Federal Government saved over N206 billion in salaries of federal civil servants during the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years.
Olusegun said that was achieved through blocking financial leakages of ghost workers. He gave the breakdown as N76 billion in 2017 and N130 billion in 2018, adding that the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari had helped sustain the policy introduced in 2007.
He said from 2015 to January 2019, the Federal Government, as part of the gains of the IPPIS, had been able to employ more than 70,000 new workers into the federal civil service.
