Back to Index

Ghost workers in new civil servant audit
Chengetai Zvauya, Daily News
July 10, 2011

http://www.dailynews.co.zw/index.php/news/34-news/3195-ghost-workers-in-new-civil-servant-audit.html

A fresh civil servants audit demanded by Zanu PF elements in government is revealing similar results as those unearthed by Ernest & Young (India), according to Minister of Public Service Eliphas Mukonoweshuro.

Reports say the audit undertaken by Ernest & Young (India) last year showed massive discrepancies, with as much as 75 000 ghost workers on the government payroll.

Some of the ghost workers include youths accused of lying idly in communities and only awakened to drive political violence during periods of elections.

Mukonoweshuro said some elements in government had rejected the Ernest & Young (India) report, demanding a new process be done by locals.

This is the second civil service staffing report to be rubbished by Zanu PF since the formation of the unity government.

Ministers from President Robert Mugabe's party rejected a report by Auditor and Comptroller General Mildred Chiri in 2009.

Chiri's report had revealed that over 10 000 youth were irregularly employed by the youth ministry during the violent and disputed 2008 elections.

"I have the report with me and we shall publish it in due time," said Mukonoweshuro on the new report.

"We engaged an international company to do an audit of the civil service workers and it produced the results that we have and we also carried our own audit and it has produced results that are similar," said Mukonoweshuro.

Mukonoweshuro said the audit was done by an inter-ministerial committee comprising of various government ministries amongst them health, education and public service.

"It is premature for me to speculate on the audit results. But I can confirm that we have found that there are ghost workers on the payroll but I cannot give you figures at the moment as I need to discuss the report with cabinet before we can publish it," said Mukonoweshuro.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, currently at loggerheads with President Robert Mugabe over civil servants salary increments, says ghost workers are affecting the government's ability to pay its workers more money.

Mukonoweshuro said Biti was justified because ghost workers were costing genuine workers a chance to earn a living salary.

"I want them (ghost workers) out so that we can remain with genuine civil servants who can earn a decent wage. We want to clean up the public service so that we can have an effective wage bill,'' said Mukonoweshuro.

Last week, civil service workers' representatives announced that government had increased their salaries and conditions leaving the lowest paid worker pocketing $186 to $253, including housing and transport allowance.

The announcement immediately caused a rift with some unions such as the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe describing the increment as falling way below the poverty datum line of around $500.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's camp said it was not consulted on the salary review. Biti told Mugabe last Wednesday that the new figures would be unsustainable without corresponding increases in government revenues.

Adding to the confusion, chief secretary to the president Misheck Sibanda told the state media that Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara had agreed that civil servants should get an urgent salary rise.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP