Monrovia – In its effort to clean ministries and agencies payrolls, the Internal Audit Agency of Liberia (IAA) has concluded the final phase of the payroll verification exercise covering the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Justice sector inclusive of the Liberia National Police (LNP), Liberia Immigration Service (LIS), Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA) and the Liberia National Fire Service (LNFS).
The IAA says the exercise seeks to provide reasonable assurance in the management of personnel services and enhance government’s objective of maintaining public financial probity.
The Director General of IAA Emmanuel B. Nyeswa, addressing a press conference in Monrovia, disclosed that the exercise achieved the cleaning of about 792 ghost names from the national payroll, thereby saving the government about L$173,833,364.00 in annual dollar value.
“In a scenario of five years, if said ghost names persist on the national payroll, the government of Liberia will be losing a whooping LRD 869,166,820.00 (Eight Hundred Sixty-nine Million One Hundred Sixty-six Thousand Eight hundred twenty Liberian dollars),” he said.
“We can proudly intimate that the Payroll Verification exercise was very successful, as it authenticated the actual number of employees that are legitimately working under the aforenamed government institutions across the Country, which was the ultimate goal of the exercise.”
He said while the exercise was extremely huge, considering the challenge of deploying auditors simultaneously across the 15 counties in the midst of COVID-19 and the difficult road conditions to access the counties, auditors braved the challenges and covered all of the areas of assignment provided by the auditees with the goal of physically verifying individuals considered employed under the entities.
“I like to clearly indicate that this final phase is a result of previous verification conducted nationwide under the 2018/2019 Payroll Verification exercise,” he noted, adding that previous exercise produced a significant number of unverified personnel, some of whom did not show up for the exercise, others are deceased, retired, dismissed, or had resigned.
The IAA boss, however, noted that in order to provide reasonable assurance that said unverified individuals are either legitimate or non-existent, “we had to initiate Phase II of the exercise which we have concluded, with recommendations forwarded for action,”
“It is crucially relevant to mention that aside from the deletion of those ghost names from government’s payroll, we have further recommended, among other things, the conduct of a forensic investigation to trace the sources of recipients of the salaries for those non-existent employees,” he added.
The IAA has completed the Phase II Payroll Verification Exercise of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to authenticate those who are working and took into consideration the total of 983 names to be verified. Out of the 983 names, 123 are presidential appointees.
The actual names for verification were 860 classified as deceased, abandoned, dismissed, not verified, verified, retired, and resigned, the IAA boss said.
Based on result from the re-verification exercise, the IAA classified the 860 names as deceased, abandoned, dismissed, not verified, verified, retired, and resigned.
The IAA boss added that auditors physically verified 347 employees of the MIA, excluding the total of 123 Presidential appointees.
“The total number of employees who were not verified in all categories are 513 with an annual payroll valued LRD 72,190,644.00,” he disclosed.
Consequently, the Internal Audit Agency recommends that the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP) deletes the 513 names as a result of deceased, abandoned, not verified (no show), dismissed, retired and resigned that are on the payroll; whereas, 347 names be maintained because they were physically verified.
Nyeswa also disclosed that to provide reasonable assurance in the management of personnel services and enhance Government’s objective of maintaining public financial probity, the IAA embarked on Phase II of a Nationwide Payroll Verification exercise.
He disclosed that the exercise was intended to re-verify the existence of the 983 names that were resubmitted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and claimed to be in the employ of the Ministry.
“The 983 names are personnel who did not show up during the first Phase of the verification,” the IAA boss said.
The Phase I Verification revealed that out of 5,182 personnel, 3,823 were physically verified while 1,359 personnel were not verified.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs accepted that of the 1,359 names, 373 were not in the entity’s employ.
Based on the results from 2018/2019 Payroll Verification Exercise, the Ministry of Finance & Development Planning deleted 373 names from the payroll and placed a hold on the 433 names based on recommendation.
The IAA with funding from MFDP, embarked on further verification of the 983. And on June 25, this year, deployed a team of auditors to the 15 counties of the Republic of Liberia to conduct the headcount.