THE Public Service Management Division (PSMD) has frozen salary accounts of 4,000 ghost civil servants on the Copperbelt.

On Friday last week, Secretary to the Cabinet Simon Miti revealed that a recent government payroll clean-up exercise on the Copperbelt established that about 4,000 civil servants were unaccounted for. Dr Miti also said about K60 million was being lost through fraudulent management of the payroll system on the Copperbelt. PSMD Permanent Secretary Boniface Chimbwali said in an interview yesterday that the 4,000 bogus workers will not have access to salaries this month.

“The 4,000 ghost workers Over 4,000 ghost accounts frozen whom Secretary to the Cabinet referred to in our meeting have a component of genuine government workers who have gone to work elsewhere without leaving a trace of authorisation. “The civil service is a big and complex institution, some could be working elsewhere and even getting paid but are not on the Copperbelt, where they are supposed to be,” he said. Mr Chimbwali said now that the salary accounts have been frozen, genuine civil servants will come out to state why they are working from different stations without authority.

He said those with genuine reasons will have their accounts unfrozen and others may be required to get back to their original work stations. Mr Chimbwali said the cleaning up of the payroll system will be extended to other provinces. “Copperbelt was the first and the exercise will be extended to other provinces, but we will not tell you our next stop.

It is our secret because if we tell you, we will be alerting the culprits,” he said. Mr Chimbwali appealed to civil servants working in areas they are not supposed to be working from to have their issues normalised to avoid being inconvenienced. “Some civil servants have genuine reasons for leaving their work stations such as medical issues and we normalise situations in such instances,” he said.

Mr Chimbwali said as Government does the roll call of civil servants, it will ensure that it does so with a human face so that those with genuine reasons are not negatively affected. And Mr Chimbwali said action will be taken against civil servants who will be found to be earning more than what they are supposed to. He said Government has started scrutinising people who should have access to the payroll to avoid such anomalies. “When one is promoted and a salary is increased, the change will be effected by the commission (Public Service Commission) and not the ministry. “It’s a huge shift with user rights which will help stop abuse of government resources,” Mr Chimbwali said