The Federal Government has said it would delist unverified civil servants from its payroll after the ongoing Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) verification exercise by Friday, October 27, 2023.
The Director of Communication, office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), Mr Mohammed Ahmed, made this known in a statement issued on Wednesday.
The federal began the implementation of the IPPIS in 2007 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.
Blocking leakages
Stating the reasons for starting the implementation with payroll first, the Director of Communication said:
- “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 explained that the office of the HOCSF had conducted a series of verification exercises, which some civil servants were unable to get captured.
As a result of this, the director explained that some of the erring officers besieged the office of the HOCSF with pleas to be given the last opportunity to comply.
- “The portal was, therefore, magnanimously reopened from Oct. 3 to 13, for them to update their records. 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 was unable to further deploy staff to the states for the exercise.
- “However, the verification of records of all civil servants will be finalized at the end of the ongoing exercise. And any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of government at the end of the two-week exercise on Friday, Oct. 27,” he explained.
The federal government had in September delisted over 17,000 government employees from the IPPIS platform for failing to comply with verification exercises spanning over five years before an additional two-week grace was granted for the unverified officers.