TheCable

The federal government says it will delist unverified civil servants from its payroll after the ongoing Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) verification exercise by Friday, October 27, 2023.

This was disclosed in a statement on Wednesday by Mohammed Ahmed, director of communication at the office of the head of the civil service of the federation (HOCSF), in Abuja.

In 2007, the federal government began the implementation of the IPPIS with a view to attaining transparency, accuracy, safety and reliability in the management of personnel records.

The initiative was also meant to curtail avoidable excesses in personnel costs.

According to Ahmed, the office of the HOCSF, being the repository of official records and information on all public servants, was saddled with the responsibility of cleansing the record on the payroll system.

“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,” he said.

Ahmed said the office had conducted a series of verification exercises, but some civil servants were unable to get captured.

The HOCSF spokesperson said some of the erring officers besieged the office with pleas to be given the last opportunity to comply.

“The portal was, therefore, magnanimously reopened from October 3 to October 13, for them to update their records,” he said.

“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 unable to further deploy staff to the states for the exercise.

“However, the verification of records of all civil servants will be finalised at the end of the ongoing exercise.

“Any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of the government at the end of the two-week exercise on Friday October 27, 2023.”

The federal government had in September, delisted over 17,000 government employees from the IPPIS platform for failing to comply with a verification exercise spanning over five years, before an additional two-week grace was granted for the unverified officers.

No fewer than 89,100 workers on the federal payroll were yet to update their records as directed by the OHCSF as at October 3, while only 700,080 had done so.