The federal government has warned civil servants that any worker whose records could not be verified on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) at the end of the ongoing verification exercise will be delisted from the payroll of the government.
Director of Communications, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mohammed Ahmed, in a statement titled, ‘Ongoing Verification Exercise: Matters Arising,’ on Wednesday, said the two-week exercise which will end on Friday, October 27, 2023, was put in place as an act of magnanimity for officers who did not take part in the earlier verifications.
Ahmed said that the federal government commenced the implementation of the IPPIS in the year 2007 to attain transparency, accuracy, safety, and reliability in the management of personnel records, while also curtailing avoidable excesses in personnel costs.
According to him, 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.
“Blocking of leakages in personnel cost cannot be genuinely achieved without verifying the personnel records of every worker. As such, in 2013, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF), being the repository of official records and information on all Public Servants, was saddled with the responsibility of cleansing the record on the Payroll.
“Leveraging technology, the Office opened a verification portal in April 2017 and directed all public servants to carry out online updates of their records. The office carried out aggressive sensitization and publicity via official, conventional, and social media.
“An initial period of three months was given for compliance, which was extended to one year, May 2018, to enable all officers to update their records. This was the first phase,” he said.
He stated that in a sequel to another wide publicity accompanied by numerous pre-verification sensitization visits by IPPIS staff to Ministries, extra-ministerial Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) nationwide, the second phase of the exercise, the physical verification, commenced in 2018.
“In this regard, 500 staff from the OHCSF were trained and deployed, in well-communicated and coordinated phases, to the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT between 2018 and 2019 to enable officers to carry out the physical verification in their states and save them from traveling to Abuja.
“The OHCSF also conducted a two-week mop-up exercise in the six geo-political zones, which ended on August 1, 2019, to further enable those who missed the first exercise to be effectively captured.
“Teams of officials were also assigned to all Unity Colleges, in order not to disrupt academic activities. Another opportunity was provided between September 2022 and February 2023 for those who failed to verify their records in the previous exercises to do so.
“Having committed substantial financial and human resources over a period of seven years to verify the records of all Civil Servants on the IPPIS platform, the Office was left with no option than to suspend the salaries of those who failed to participate in the exercise with effect from September 2023,” he said.
Ahmed further said that consequent upon this, some of the erring officers besieged the OHCSF with pleas to be given the last opportunity to comply, and the portal was, therefore, magnanimously reopened from October 3-13, 2023 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 was unable to further deploy staff to the states for the exercise.
“Adequate arrangements were put in place for a smooth exercise in designated areas of the FCT, however, the officers’ impatience and lack of orderliness in the first two days made the exercise rowdy. This has been duly addressed and the two-week exercise, scheduled to end on Friday, October 27, 2023, is progressing very well.
“It should be noted that the aforementioned officers are the architects of their inconveniences for not being compliant with official directives. However, the verification of records of all Civil Servants will be finalized at the end of the ongoing exercise and any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of government,” he stated.
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