Govt vs ghost workers: Who is winning?

For the umpteenth time, the government is announcing yet another purge of an unbelievable number of ghost workers – 11,000, according to the Ministry of Public Service.

This raises the question of between the government and the ghost workers who is winning? Or is the government using the so-called purge of ghost workers from its system as a ploy to brandish its anticorruption credentials?

These are some of the disturbing questions that come to mind when the news continues to break that so many thousands of ghost workers are again discovered within a repeatedly streamlined civil service.

It would be noted that the Ministry of Public Service has said the period of anarchy is over and it’s time for fake workers to leave. Officials at the Ministry say over 11.000 “ghost workers” identified in the last census had till 15 January 2016 to show proof of engagement or be scrapped off from the state payroll.

The Minister of Public Service, Michel Ange Angouing, announced on Wednesday 14 January 2016 that the identified ghost workers have been given a long period to clear their situation. He regretted that for over three months these illegal workers have failed to show up. Nothing thus could be further from the truth, leaving the government with no choice than purge them out.

It should be recalled that in the months of August and November 2015, the names of 14,134 suspected ghost civil servants were published and invited to clarify their administrative status within eight days. The list of the suspected ghost civil servants had been put up in the Ministry of Public Service and Administrative Reform, its Regional Delegations and the ministry’s website www.minfopra.gov.cm.

The operation is aimed at cleaning and putting up the right data of State personnel within the framework of the Integrated Management System of State Personnel and Salaries (SIGIPES II).

Michel Ange Angouing had last November 2015 stated that for the sake of efficiency, sub-divisional, divisional and regional delegations of all the concerned administrative services would have to be involved in the exercise.

Those concerned had to produce documents and submit to their immediate hierarchy charged with forwarding the said documents to the Department of Human Resources of their ministries.

Since then, many of them, over 11,000, are yet to clear their case at the Ministry of Public Service.

Their salaries are expected to be suspended and their administrative data would not be transferred to the Integrated Management System of State Personnel and Salaries (SIGIPES II) whose implementation is imminent.

As the Ministry plans severe sanctions on such defaulters, observers say yearly checks should be carried to sort out many more of such ghost workers who have over the years, defrauded the state of billions of FCFA.