By Reuben Sei Waylaun
To eliminate the perpetual payroll paddling, double or multiple dipping, bank account manipulation, retaining ghost employee on the payroll, the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning through the Liberia Macroeconomic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC) in collaboration with the Civil Service Agency (CSA) Thursday January 14, 2021 trained Personnel Directors, Human Resource Managers, Comptrollers among on the new measures being taken.
The aim of the payroll awareness according to the organizers is to fight payroll fraud through biometric identification, physical headcount or physical verification of staff, automated payroll system and processing and automated attendance system. A total of 120 spending entities attended the training.
Speaking at the opening of the training, the Executive Director of Liberia Macroeconomic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC), Del Francis Wreh
said the training was just the beginning of many training to ensure a stable and update payroll system.
“This is the start of series of workshop for human resource managers, personnel managers, comptrollers etc on the payroll system. Some of the techniques of the payroll is equitable, value for money and marketable. We will drill you through on other steps at the MFDP, vouchers, cash management system,” Mr. Wreh said.
For his part, the Director-General of the Civil Service Agency, Jimmy Thompson said they were happy to have all of the people directly involved with the payroll system.
DG Thompson said “We trying to eliminate all of the mistakes and questions we have. We had begun series of payroll reforms since 2019; we eliminated dual payroll system, discretionary payroll system.”
He said the payroll harmonization was intended to have control over the payroll; saying it was dangerous when all the money goes to pay people.
Mr. Thompson added “For the first time we established control over the numbers and it’s working for government and pay them. We now know the number and compensation. We need to control our wage bills. We need to develop a number of measures. We have the tools and consistently cleaning the payroll. We are implementing measures to consistently clean the payroll. We are processing you every month. We are serious about what we are doing.”
“At the CSA, we are working on the pen process instead of carbon papers. There is so much we have to do and much we haven’t done. We will start making direct pay into people’s account. We are automating the system of pension,” he said.
For her part, Deputy Finance Minister for Budget, Tanneh G. Brunnson reminded the trainees that the training is a joint initiative of the Liberian Government and the process started about two years ago because it was enormous and crowded up the fiscal space.
“We knew that there were gross disparities in government. Many of us created space to accommodate our friends and relatives. Much more needs to be done to manage our wage bill. We need to ensure the validity of our employees,” he said.
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