62,893 GHOST WORKERS,UNCOVERED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT-OKONJO IWEALA.

                           The Coordinating Minister of Finance,Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala,made these disclosure yesterday tuesday in Abuja at a forum of the Catholic CARISTAS Foundation of Nigeria under the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria.She said apart from the initial saving of N208.7 billion from the introduction of Government Integrated Financiak Management Information System {GIFMIS},the government aimed to save an additional N36 billion from blocking some loopholes after weeding out 62,893 ghost workers from the payroll system.''When we talk of corruption,we had a system that is cash based,for example when we want to pay salaries,we send money to ministry of Agriculture and say here is your money,pay your people.Here is ministry of Education,pay your people yes,that is what  we are doing.Where as,if we had an electronic platform,there will be no transfer of cash.That is what we have done now in ''GIFMIS''.What does it do?,it transfers money electronically from budget to the Accountant General to Ministries,Departments and Agencies,and guess what,in December,remember that salaries were delayed,there was a problem.Everybody thought the economy was broke but what happened was that 14 agencies which were on GIFMIS,tried to pay more and utilize more than what was programmed.The system locked them out,and they could not pay one person in their agencies''.For the sake of those that don't really understand the meaning of ghost workers.''Ghost workers are those that their names are included in the payroll of an employer,but they don't actually work for that salary because it is either someone fraudulently added their names to a payroll in other to collect the salaries of those unknown people,or the person was employed but don't showup for work or stop working for that employer''.