By THE OBSERVER UG
Speaker Anita Among hands over the report to LoP as AG John Muwanga (L) looks on
A validation exercise carried out by the auditor general has established that the government has been paying over Shs 53 billion annually to ghost employees.
The office of the auditor general undertook a special audit of the salary payroll across all government employees in 367 entities comprising 162 departments, 179 local governments and 29 other government organisations in February 2023.
The exercise revealed 10,192 employees, which were recommended for removal from the government payroll having been confirmed either dead, absconded or retired by the time of validation.
“I further observed that a total of Shs 53 billion was being paid to this category of staff and it is therefore recoverable,” assistant auditor General Edward Akol said in a brief to speaker of parliament, Anita Among.
Akol advised accounting officers to update their payrolls accordingly and initiate steps to recover the monies that were irregularly paid. According to Akol, a total of 358,753 employees who appeared for the validation exercise presented all the pre-requisite documents and were fully verified while 25,439 were partially verified.
“7,744 individuals whose names were not on the base payroll appeared for validation exercise and presented all pre requisite documents and were recommended to be included on the validated payroll,’ Akol said.
He added that during the exercise, they found that 2,067 employees were being paid Shs 22.4 billion per year but their documents were not satisfactory while, 6,307 employees were paid Shs 23.6 billion irregularly after they were confirmed to be either dead, absconded or retired at the time of validation.
Akol said 1,818 individuals who were paid Shs 56 million in the month of February alone were found to be nonexistent. Speaker Among after receiving the report pledged to have the report scrutinized as a constitutional requirement, within six months.
“Let us not have any backlog and let us not continue adopting reports which have not been scrutinized. It shows vote of no confidence. But I believe that the leader of opposition is going to make things work out,” Among said as she handed the report to Joel Ssenyonyi.
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