Police, Education and PWD hold major share: 21,000 ghost employees detected in Sindh government departments

Sindh Police, Education and Population Welfare Departments (PWD) have the major share in 21,000 ghost employees of the provincial government detected a few days back.
Sources in the Services Department told Business Recorder on Tuesday that during a recent exercise of verification it was found that Education, Sindh Police and Population Welfare departments have a long list of ghost employees, while non-existent employees were detected in some other provincial departments.
The Sindh government, in collaboration with Nadra, conducted a verification exercise, which showed existence of thousands of "ghost employees" in many departments of provincial government. Provincial government had so far lost over Rs 10 billion on account of salary payment to these non-existent employees.
The list showed that Local Government, Revenue, Irrigation, Food, Industries, Zakat and Ushr, Auqaf, Home, Excise and Taxation and some other departments also have ghost employees, sources said. Nadra scrutinised 401,388 employees. Of these 327,578 had new CNICs (computerised national identity cards), and 73,810 had old NICs.
Nadra had no record of 20,456 manual NICs, while 21,438 fake CNICs were detected during this exercise. Of these, 638 had been blocked. The scrutiny showed that 1,264 people held two government jobs, sources said. The verification exercise also disclosed that 381 employees had died but their salaries were still being drawn. There was a discrepancy in the dates of birth of 16,065 employees, sources said.
In this connection, Sindh government has formed an "assessment committee" under Services Department Secretary. The committee would identify the "ghost employees" so that action could be taken against them, sources said. The committee will ascertain the eligibility of the government servants based on the data provided by Nadra through the departments concerned. The committee would then find out the reasons for the discrepancy in finding of the data provided by Nadra and the payroll provided by the Sindh Accountant General, sources added.
When contacted, Information Minister Shazia Marri told Business Recorder that assessment committee is working to identify the real ghost employees. She said that after the report of said committee, authorities would decide the fate of non-existent and double job employees. It may be noted here that Education Department had already released a list of more than 350 employees who used to work in various media organisations, NGOs and other organisations.