President Yoweri Museveni has directed the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), to arrest and prosecute all government officials linked to ghost civil servants on the payroll.
The directive follows several reports confirming the existence of ghost employees spread across government departments including one were compiled by the Auditor General who had conducted a validation exercise on government payroll and provided a raft of recommendations.
In March this year, the ministry of public service announced it had started the process to delete and remove from the payroll all unverified individuals, ghost employees and those irregularly retained after death, abscondment or transfer.
The process was part of recommendations by the Auditor General following a special audit he conducted on government payroll which revealed 10,192 ghost employees who should be immediately removed having been confirmed either dead, absconded or retired by the time of validation.
The validation exercise also established that the government has been paying over Shs 53 billion annually to ghost employees.
The audit was intended to establish the credibility of the government payroll, confirm the number of government workers and estimate the payroll budget. It also assessed management systems and made appropriate recommendations.