by Prof Yerro Mballow

As part of the routine exercise, of the Personnel Management Office (PMO), a staff audit was recently conducted with the objective of cleaning up Government payroll of ghost workers within the system.

This was contained in a press statement released last week from the office of the Permanent Secretary, Personnel Management Office (PMO), Banjul.

The incidence of “ghost workers” the released stated, has been a perennial problem in the Civil service and it normally occurs when Civil servants unceremoniously left their jobs.

Pertaining to current situation, it added, the staff audit exercise covered three key Ministries namely; Ministries of Basic and Secondary Education, Health and Agriculture.

The audit exercise revealed that, at the end of the exercise, over 3, 000 civil servants where not physically identified by the audit teams that visited their (civil servants) posting institutions around the country.

“A list of unseen staff was generated and shared with their respective institutions for their (institution’s) views and comments. For those staff in respect of whom some comments were received about their whereabouts, their status were verified and confirmed as seen,” the statement explained.

It was after that a final list of unseen was generated and shared with the respective institutions, informing them that if no further reactions were received on behalf of their staff in question, their salaries will be stopped for the month of September 2024. This was what led to the stoppage of the salaries of over 3, 000 civil servants for the month mentioned above.

As part of the process the release added, those who surface after the stoppage of their salaries were provided with proofs of their salaries status as active civil servants (i.e. attestation from heads of their institution, proof of attendance register, maternity, sick and study leave letters, etc.), without which their salaries wouldn’t be reinstated.

According to the released, it is not common to hear civil servants say they are sick and were undergoing some traditional treatments or to find them enrolled themselves in educational institutions without adhering to due process of obtaining sick leave or study leave with salary prior to the commencement of such treatments of programs.

As an update, after two weeks of salary stoppage, and as at October 10, 2024 it went on, only 882 have been verified and confirmed as regular civil servants out of 3,024 salaries that have been stopped; meaning there is an outstanding number of over 2, 142 civil servants yet to be accounted for.

In a similar but separate development, PMO intend to conduct similar exercise to cover the rest of the Civil Service as well as the pensioners shortly.