Abuja - The Federal Government has uncovered 45 000 ghost workers from 215 Ministries, Departments and Agencies under the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS).
Dr Yerima Ngama, the Minister of State for Finance, disclosed this on Wednesday while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council meeting Presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan at the State House.
Ngama said the discovery of the ghost workers had resulted in the reduction of the wage bill by about N100 billion.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting was devoted to the performance report of the Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs in 2012.
Ngama said that the IPPIS was introduced to enhance efficiency in personnel cost, planning and budgeting based on actual verifiable number and not estimates.
He said the government had so far undertaken staff auditing in 215 MDAs and audited 153,019 staff as at January 2013.
"We are doing a lot to reduce recurrent expenditure by making salary administration very efficient and we are employing technology in doing that.
"We have introduced the IPPIS through which we are paying the salaries of Federal Government employees and agencies centrally.
"Because we have the detailed biometric of every staff, we can weed out ghost workers.
"What we have done so far, we have covered 215 MDAs and we have discovered 45,000 ghost workers and that has reduced the total bill by about N100 billion," he said.
Ngama said that 321 MDAs had yet to be captured on the IPPIS.
He said government had also established the Treasury Single Account as a unified structure of government bank account that gives a consolidated view of the cash position
"92 MDAs are currently on TSA, 97 Abuja-based MDAs will be added by March 2013.
"The Ministry is tasked with efficient micro economic management, mobilisation of fund for real sector development and introduction of structural reforms that will enhance creation of jobs," he said.
The minister also said that the ministry, for the first time, broke the jinx surrounding late preparation of budget as the 2013 budget was presented at a record time, in September, 2012
He said the grey area hindering the signing of the budget by the President would soon be resolved.
- NAN