Africa-Press – South-Africa. The National Treasury said it’s already started the process of eliminating almost 9,000 ghost workers from the government’s payroll.
The National Treasury, in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) tabled by Minister Enoch Godongwana on Wednesday, said the department was able to flag 8,854 cases where people were receiving payments from multiple departments.
The removal of ghost workers is also part of the National Treasury’s efforts to boost efficiency and reduce government waste through its savings initiative.
National Treasury said its ghost worker removal programme has found how people are drawing salaries despite being inactive employees or had bank account anomalies.
It said the ghost worker identification process will also identify individuals appearing on multiple government systems.
Godongwana also stated that their savings initiative will also root out social grant fraud and “double dipping”.
But the Director-General, Dr Duncan Pieterse, said that the ghost worker numbers still need further verification.
“So, what we’ve done there is work closely with South African Revenue Service in terms of the tax data and using the confidential and anonymous tax data.”
But Pieterse said they will only be able to tell how much money has been lost to ghost employees once the verification is complete.
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