MONROVIA- The National Identification Registry (NIR) and the Civil Service Agency (CSA) have signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance collaboration for improved service delivery in the public sector.
By Francis G. Boayue
The MOU between the NIR and the CSA was signed on Monday at the NIR office in Sinkor, and aims to design, produce, and issue biometric cards, with an assigned number for all 103 government spending entities to address the challenge of possible fraudulent duplication in the public sector.
The CSA Director-General, Hon. Josiah F. Joekai, Jr, speaking at the ceremony on Monday, described the occasion as historic and a great step forward for both institutions, noting that the MoU with the NIR will make the CSA’s job easier in verifying employees’ status and will help eliminate inefficiencies and discrepancies from the government payroll.
“The partnership will see the implementation of a comprehensive biometric verification system, which will form an inter-agency partnership that will provide the CSA with ongoing access to the NIR’s e-verification platform to ensure that all GOL employees’ National Identification Numbers are inserted on the working identification cards that the CSA will produce and issue.
“The process is part of ways to help the CSA to verify all civil servants across Liberia ensuring they are legit and help bring integrity to the payroll by removing names that are on the payroll without any justification of their workings,” CSA Director-General, Hon. Josiah F. Joekai, Jr added.
Also speaking, the Executive Director of the National Identification Registry Hon. Andrew Peters, said the MoU is more than just a piece of paper and that it will strengthen and improve the country’s data collection. Adding that the MoU will put an end to what people refer to as double-dipping, in which some individuals are on multiple payrolls under different names, collecting large sums of money at the expense of the government.
According to him, doing so will help save money and time while also preventing fraud, duplications, and double-dipping.
“‘Our technology can execute both individual and batch verifications easily as we promised to collaborate with the CSA to provide every civil servant with a single identification number for proper representation and to assist the Liberian government and its ministries, agencies, and commissions in improving and strengthening information collection, storage, evaluation, and security, as well as other identification documents,” NIR Boss Peters said.
The signing ceremony, held at the NIR headquarters, brought together key officials from both institutions, including the Minister of Justice, Hon. Oswald Tweh, who is a board member of the NIR, marked the beginning of a strategic partnership aimed at integrating the national identification system with civil service operations.
