The Permanent Secretary/ Secretary to the Treasury- Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFPED) Ramathan Ggoobi has warned that any civil servant who will miss out on the ongoing verification and validation exercise will be removed from the government payroll with effect from the next Financial Year.
Mr. Ggoobi said the ongoing exercise is for only public servants and is a compulsory non-negotiable activity. It’s carefully carried out by the Office of the Auditor General where every civil servant will be given a number if verified as a bonafide public servant.
Addressing journalists shortly after being verified as a bonafide public servant on Monday at the Ministry of Finance headquarters in Kampala, Mr Ggoobi said the exercise is intended to eliminate ghost employees, to know the exact number of government employees and how much each earns and why.
“This exercise is critical for all public servants and is the only guarantee that their names will be on the government payroll. Whoever will fail to get the number from the auditors carrying out this exercise, will not be on the government payroll and will never again receive any salary from the government. So we don’t want excuses such as I didn’t know, I was not around or was informed late. No, Let every public servant go to his/her workstation and be verified,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear that a public servant X has not been paid after this exercise because we want to know those who claim that they have not been paid who take their salary? As the Ministry of Finance, we release salaries on time before the 15th depending on the number of employees each agency or ministry has sent to us. But still, we get claims that some people didn’t receive their salaries, therefore this exercise is intended to clear this. It sounds very unfair to hear that some government civil servants are demanding their salaries yet here at the Ministry of Finance we released the money, why don’t you pay people? That is why this ongoing audit is going to help us find out the exact number government pays,” he said.
He added that the exercise is also intended to find out the honesty of government accounting officers. “We want also to find out the authenticity of the number of government employees our accounting officers have been sending us and how they have been budgeting for their salaries.”
Meanwhile, the head count exercise for all public servants came up due to the letter from the Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija to Auditor General John Muwanga requesting him to carry out an outstanding and exclusive special audit pertaining to the issues of government payroll. He wanted to know the number of employees on the government payroll and their salaries.
The exercise in question started this month and here a civil servant presents all his/her documents showing when he/she started working for the government, qualifications, the size of the salary and where she/he receives it from, and many other requirements.
After the exercise, the Auditor General Mr Muwanga will issue a final verification report next month in June and it is from this report that the Ministry of Finance will use to determine how much money each government entity will receive to pay for salaries starting from the next Financial Year.
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