The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal wishes to express its grave concern at the slow pace of detecting – and removing – ghost employees from some municipal payrolls in the Province, which is fraudulently depleting tax-payers’ money.
The IFP’s concern follows reports that the Msunduzi Municipality has moved to freeze the salaries of 121 people feared to be ‘ghost’ employees.
If these allegations are found to be true, serious questions need to be asked. How did the names of these ghost employees get added to the Msunduzi municipal payroll in the first place? Who is benefitting from this scheme and depleting municipal funds? This is tantamount to corruption, which is committed intentionally – therefore someone must be held accountable. There is no excuse for corruption and those with an insatiable appetite for embezzling public funds must be punished.
The state of Pietermaritzburg town is not pleasing at all, so it is concerning that funds that should be used to clean the town are used to pay ghost employees.
The entire payroll system needs to be cleaned up immediately, and these ghost workers must be removed in order to reduce the public service wage bill.
Only legally employed workers must be paid. One of the areas that consumes a huge chunk of the government’s resources is the remuneration of public workers. It is disheartening that in light of minimal financial resources within the municipalities that such funds are used to pay ghost employees.
Stringent monitoring measures must be implemented and all loopholes closed, so as to ensure that available resources are channelled to areas of need, and not into the pockets of corrupt individuals.
The IFP calls upon the KZN MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Honourable S Hlomuka, to institute his own investigation into this matter. He must take the necessary actions to ensure that anyone found to be involved in this corrupt activity is held accountable.
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Contact:
Mr OTTO B KUNENE, MPL
IFP KZN Provincial Spokesperson for COGTA
083 417 9944