Govt vows to probe ghost workers on payroll, Prosecute culprits

By Elijah Khisa

The government has warned that it has finalized plans of launching deep rooted investigations into allegations of ghost workers listed on payroll saying culprits implicated face outright prosecution.

The threats have been sounded by the state minister for public service Mary Akiiki Mugasa during an exclusive interview with this website last week.

The minister from the Bunyoro oil and gas region said they got  shocked to read from the auditor general’s report which noted how over 10,000 ghost workers had clandestinely accessed the government payroll illegally with its suspected syndicate perpetrators pocketing over 52bn annually and walking Scott free.

‘We have received the copy from the auditor general’s report and currently studying it to ensure that we critically verify to know who are the scam perpetrators and after identifying them, we shall later proceed to arraign them before courts of law such that we recover the lost dime as well jail them if found guilty’ fumed the minister.

She however blamed the scam on the reported deliberate government decentralization policy  of the recruitment of civil servants processes which is being done at district level by respective district service commissions [DSC] teams.

‘These teams are responsible for carrying out all the districts  recruitment exercises  of civil servants independent of the ministry which act may have led to a lacuna were some unscrupulous bosses clandestinely connived to systematically recruit ghost workers’ lamented the minister.

Sources at parliament suggest that government was in the process of reversing its recruitment systems back to the ministry of public service as a deliberate effort to cut out such thugs