The Biometric Registration Exercise that the Public Service Commission (PSC) embarked upon has revealed that the payroll is healthier with less than 100 names of civil servants still outstanding and awaiting verification, PSC secretary Ambassador Jonathan Wutawunashe said in a statement last night.
The PSC, with assistance from the World Bank, undertook a Biometric Registration Exercise across the civil service to ensure all individuals appearing on the payroll were genuine Government workers.
“Instances of bona fide workers whose attributes did not appear in the records of the Registrar General’s Office were discovered during the exercise,” he said.
“In order to ensure that only those confirmed through biometric attributes would remain on the payroll, the Public Service Commission issued an ultimatum indicating that those failing to regularise their documentation with the Registrar General’s Office within a defined time frame would be struck off the payroll.
“This prompted Government workers to check their status with the Registrar General’s office, which provided regular updates to the Commission.”
After the exercise, the PSC found that the payroll was “actually much healthier than expected”, with bright prospects of a total absence of ghost workers.
The PSC says, as 2020 ends, the overwhelming majority of those on the payroll have been verified as genuine civil servants.