The Federal Government has announced its intention to remove unverified civil servants from its payroll following the conclusion of the ongoing Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) verification exercise by October 27.
Mohammed Ahmed, Director of Communication at the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), disclosed this in a statement released on Wednesday in Abuja.
The Federal Government initiated the IPPIS in 2007 to enhance transparency, accuracy, safety, and reliability in managing personnel records. It also aimed to curb unnecessary personnel cost overruns.
In September, the Federal Government delisted over 17,000 government employees from the IPPIS platform due to their failure to comply with a verification exercise that spanned over five years. An additional two-week grace period was granted to the unverified officers.
According to Ahmed, the Office of the HOCSF, responsible for maintaining official records and information on all public servants, was tasked with purging the payroll system of irregularities.
He explained that the implementation of IPPIS initially focused on the Payroll module rather than the Human Resource component, as part of the government’s efforts to combat ghost workers and eliminate cost leakages.
The Office of the HOCSF conducted a series of verification exercises, during which some civil servants could not be properly recorded.
In response to this, some non-compliant officers requested a final opportunity to update their records.
The portal was reopened from October 3 to 13 for these individuals to make necessary updates. They were also required to come to Abuja for physical verification, as the office had already allocated and spent its budgeted funds and couldn’t further deploy staff to states for the exercise.
However, the verification of records for all civil servants will conclude at the end of the ongoing exercise, and any officer whose record remains unverified will be removed from the government’s payroll at the end of the two-week exercise on Friday, October 27.