Prasa ‘saves R200m’ on ghost workers
The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) saved about R200 million through a project to verify employees on its payroll system as its preliminary investigation was not able to verify 1 480 employees, while 1 159 resigned during the process.
Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula told the media yesterday that Project Ziveze was launched 10 months ago to verify all Prasa employees, after material irregularities were uncovered within its information and communications technology (ICT) systems, Human Capital Management (HCM), and payroll.
The scope of the project also extends to validating whether the employment of foreign nationals was in line with the provisions of the law. “We are on course to rid Prasa of all forms of corruption.
“Those officials who aid and abet these dastardly deeds of corruption will face the full might of the law. We have a duty to ensure public resources are channelled towards delivering services to the citizens in a responsible and cost effective manner,” said Mbalula.
During Phase 1 of the project, all employees were invited on a voluntary basis to come forward to be verified with copies of their IDs, qualifications and the HCM employee data forms. “During this phase, out of the 17 268 recorded employees on Prasa’s payroll system, 14 268 employees presented themselves for verification,” said Mbalula.
“During the same period, 1 159 employees resigned. Failure by 3 000 employees to come forward for physical verification led to suspicions that there could be a number of ghost employees at Prasa.”
Prasa then commissioned the services of an independent service provider to establish if these were indeed ghost employees and identify weaknesses in the Prasa system, as well as culpable officials who may have colluded with unscrupulous people to create ghost employees.
The investigation was conducted with the support of the department of home affairs, the SA Revenue Service, Umalusi, and the SA Qualifications Authority.
The probe flagged 2 143 employees, who were then grouped according to the following categories:
Possible ghost employees who could not be physically verified;
Employees masquerading as somebody else, thus possible identity theft;
Fraudulent qualifications submitted; and
Employees with serious criminal offences
“As a consequence of the developments to date, the next steps include taking urgent action to address the findings and challenges identified to date,” said Mbalula. These include a forensic investigation on critical issues flagged in the preliminary investigation.