The Federal Government on Wednesday hinted that it would delist unverified civil servants from its payroll after the ongoing Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) verification exercise by Friday this week.
The Director of Communication, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), Mr Mohammed Ahmed, in a statement pointed out the office of the office, being the repository of official records and information on all public servants, was saddled with the responsibility of entrenching transparency in the payroll system.
According to him, the latest move by the government is part of the current efforts to block leakages from the public finance system in line with its ongoing reform initiatives.
The Director stated: “Driven by the government’s quest to curb ghost workers syndrome and block leakages through personnel cost, the implementation of IPPIS commenced with the Payroll module rather than the Human Resource component.”
Recalling that the office of the HOCSF had conducted a series of verification exercises, which still didn’t achieve the full capturing of civil servants in the payroll system, Ahmed stated this led to some affected staff appealing to the office to be given the last opportunity to comply with the directive.
He further clarified: “The portal was, therefore, magnanimously reopened from Oct. 3 to 13, for them to update their records. The officers were then asked to come to Abuja for the physical verification exercise as the office had already committed and exhausted the budgeted funds and was unable to further deploy staff to the states for the exercise.
“However, the verification of records of all civil servants will be finalized at the end of the ongoing exercise. And any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of government at the end of the two-week exercise on Friday, Oct. 27”, the Director added.
The government had in September delisted over 17,000 government employees from the IPPIS platform for failing to comply with verification exercises spanning over five years before an additional two-week extension was approved for the exercise.
The implementation of the IPPIS which kicked off in 2007 was intended to achieving transparency, accuracy, safety, and reliability in the management of personnel records of the federal civil service with a view of avoiding all forms of frauds in the system.
