The Federal Government through the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF), has said 1,618 Federal Civil Servants have been discovered with fake letters of employment.

Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, who announced this on Tuesday at a media parley in Abuja, explained that her Office through the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System(IPPIS) had detected these workers with fake and illegal letters of employment, following the verification of 69,854 officers across the core Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government in the 36 States of the Federation and Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Yemi-Esan noted that the affected workers have been suspended from the IPPIS platform, adding that they have been handed over to ICPC for proper investigation and prosecution.

She said: “The Office of the Head of Service has been working towards the implementation of the HR Module of IPPIS with a view to bridging the identified gaps in the system.

“As you are aware, prior to the introduction of the current mechanisms put in place to drive the implementation of the IPPIS, the system was bedeviled with considerable leakages and wastes as well as the incessant infiltration of ghost workers.

“Consequent upon the identified loopholes in the IPPIS, the Office introduced control mechanisms, notable among others, was the inauguration of a Committee on Enrolment of Newly Recruited Civil Servants on the 1st of March, 2021.

“Hence, this and other initiatives in accelerating the roll-out of the HR Module of the IPPIS, has brought about the following: Detection of 1,618 fake/illegal employment letters; Continuous suspension of Officers from the IPPIS platform for not uploading their records; Verification of 69,854 officers across the core MDAs in FCT and the six (6) geo-political zones.

“In our investigation, we have found out these workers that were not employed at all, who have found their way into the civil service.”

She revealed that there is an ongoing verification of 205,411 officers across non-core MDAs in the FCT and the six geo-political zones.

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation disclosed that the ICPC has begun the investigation of 3,657 officers for not being present during the verification audit, adding that there is the verification of 3,465 officers who were recruited from 2017-2019 and those absorbed into the mainstream civil service.

She expressed optimism that by the end of 2024, the verification of these non-core civil servants would have been completed.

Commenting on digitalisation, which is one of the pillars of the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (2021-2025) (FCSSIP 25), Yemi-Esan said her Office in collaboration with the Aig- Imoukhuede Foundation had focused on driving public sector transformation in Africa through the deployment of technological solutions.

She said through the collaboration, the Service had to deal with manually-held records and bureaucratic inhibitions to open government; arbitrary allocation of devices without records and not based on needs as well as apathy in the use of official emails.

As part of her achievements, she announced that the OHCSF has gone digital or paperless.

“I am pleased to state that the Office of the Head of Service has gone digital with its work process.

“You may wish to know that between April 2023 when the Office initially operationalised the platform in a live environment, about 5,300 files have been treated by the immediate Office of the Head of Service within the OHCSF while over 4,130 files of that number have completed the action cycle.

“What this translates to is seamless monitoring of workflow and eventual cost savings on stationeries and computer consumables.

“It should also be noted that some other MDAs have also deployed ECM solutions such as the Federal Ministry of Transport. So, a lot is being done in this area,” she explained. (Daily Independent)

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