Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, yesterday maintained she will not succumb to pressures from powerful interests to shelve plans to audit the security agencies’ payroll, which she described an important national assignment that must be carried out holistically in line with the directives of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Speaking in Abuja with the representatives of the para-military agencies, she said the exercise was very necessary to check the alleged phoney allowances and other financial misappropriations of the agencies.
She wondered why about N165 billion is spent monthly in paying the salary of the security agencies without accountability, adding that the ongoing auditing exercise has revealed that much of the nation’s budgetary allocations were actually going into the pockets of ghost workers.
In his remarks, Director, Special Projects and Head, Continuous Auditing Team of the Ministry, Mohammed Dikwa, stated that the meeting was in line with the government’s directives to vet payrolls and review where necessary and also improve the integrity and efficiency of the payrolls. Dikwa also revealed that the exercise has saved the Federal Government the sum of N50 billion and about 43,000 ghost workers have been discovered and blocked.
According to him, the relevant training that will provide the financial officers of the agencies with the working knowledge of the exercise shall start immediately, while biometric capture of para-military organisations would be concluded within one month.
In his remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior, Mr. Bassey Ekpenyong, said the Minister of Interior has assured that he will cooperate with the Minister to make the exercise a success.
Meanwhile, Dr. Joe Abah, the Director General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), says the Federal Government has saved over N185 billion since the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Abah said this while presenting the “Status Report of Reforms” at a five-day Specialised Reforms/Servicom Training Programme in Abuja on Tuesday. He said a lot of remarkable reforms have taken place in the civil service, including removal of 65,000 ghost workers from IPPIS.
“IPPIS has been a great success but it has some challenges and one of the weaknesses is that as soon as BPE put in place IPPIS after piloting it for a couple of years, it was basically taken over by accountants and they started with payroll instead of with the HCSC – Head of Civil Service Commission.
“It is possible to get on the payroll without being known by the Federal Civil Service Commission. That is why we still have issue with IPPIS but we are working on that and we are hoping that complete HCSC switch will come on board in July.’’
He said that BPE was also working with the Efficiency Unit to ensure that salaries are linked with the Bank Verification Numbers.
Abah said that civil servants should not allow people to accuse them of not doing well, saying that some of the reforms are working despite the challenges. He said one of the reforms that had also worked in the civil service was the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).
“Before 2004, if you retire, you will be entitled to a pension but whether you actually get it is another matter because as at 2004, we had pension deficit of N43 billion. So, the real chance is that you could retire but wait for 10 years and you will actually not see the CPS; our pension pot is now in credit of N4.8 trillion as at 2015.
“However, there are still challenges – we are still not managing our PFAs (Pension Funds Administrators) – very well. There is still a big gap between when you retire and when you start to get a pension; sometimes a gap of about nine months – that is still a gap we still need to deal with.’’