By OKON OKON

The Federal Government says it will delist unverified civil servants from its payroll after the ongoing Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) verification exercise by Oct 27.

Mr Mohammed Ahmed, Director Communication, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), made this known in a statement issued on Wednesday in Abuja.

The federal began the implementation of the IPPIS in 2007 with a view to attaining transparency, accuracy, safety and reliability in the management of Personnel Records.

The initiative was also meant to curtail avoidable excesses in personnel costs.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the federal government had in September delisted over 17,000 government employees from the IPPIS platform for failing to comply with a verification exercises spanning over five years, before additional two-week grace was granted for the unverified officers.

According to Ahmed, the office of the HOCSF, being the repository of official records and information on all public servants, was saddled with the responsibility of cleansing the record on the payroll system.

“Driven by the government’s quest to curb ghost workers syndrome and block leakages through personnel cost, the implementation of IPPIS commenced with the Payroll module rather than the Human Resource component.”

He explained that office of the HOCSF had conducted series of verification exercises, which some civil servants were unable to get captured.

Consequent upon this, the director explained that some of the erring officers besieged the office of the HOCSF with pleas to be given the last opportunity to comply.

“The portal was therefore, magnanimously reopened from Oct. 3 to 13, for them to update their records.

“The officers were then asked to come to Abuja for the physical verification exercise as the office had already committed and exhausted the budgeted funds and unable to further deploy staff to the states for the exercise.

“However, the verification of records of all civil servants will be finalised at the end of the ongoing exercise.

“And any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of government at the end of the two-week exercise on Friday Oct. 27,” he explained. (NAN)

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