Mpumalanga on mission to verify over 80 000 employees, eliminate ghost workers

The Mpumalanga provincial Treasury is embarking on a staff verification process of more than 80 000 employees in the provincial government.

This was revealed on Tuesday by the MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, Vusi Mkhatshwa, during the tabling of provincial Treasury’s budget vote in the legislature.

Staff verification process

Mkhatshwa said his department started the process to verify all employees on the Personal and Salary System (Persal) in March.

The staff verification, which is conducted by means of biometric fingerprint system, was meant to establish the authenticity of employees against the Persal system.

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There were currently 83 187 employees on the provincial government’s Persal system, with projected expenditure of R33.6 billion for the year ending 31 March 2023.

Mkhatshwa said the staff verification project was one of the expenditure control measures aimed at ensuring the credibility of the provincial budget management.

“The principal objective of this exercise is to ensure that public funds are paid to existing personnel who are contributing to the functioning of the provincial government,” he said in a statement.

“The project is in line with the section 18 of the Public Finance Management Act, No. 1 of 1999 which requires the Provincial Treasury to, amongst others, promote and enforce transparency and effective management in respect of revenue, expenditure, assets and liabilities of provincial departments and provincial public entities.”

The verification process was anticipated to be completed in the second quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, the budget appropriated to the Provincial Treasury for the 2022/23 financial year was over R566 million.

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