By Precious D. Freeman
The Ministry of Justice has been mandated to investigate three government spending entities for grave financial leakages.
The Civil Service Agency (CSA) Director-General, Josiah Joekai, said the Agency began scrutinizing the payroll and is currently carrying out a comprehensive physical variation and headcount of employees of the more than 100 spending entities.
He lamented that among those were the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Liberia Institute for Public Administration and the National Coordinating Review Mechanism which according to him human resources directors and financial controllers failed to clearly provide and verify with documentation missteps and misappropriation of funds.
“For grave financial leakages allegedly orchestrated by Human Resources Directors and Financial controllers, the Civil Service Agency has submitted to the Ministry of Justice for investigation these human Resources and Financial controllers assigned at the three spending institutions which include the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Liberia Institute for Public Administration and the National Coordinating Review Mechanism,” he explained.
This according to the CSA is part of personal verification and headcount Audit of the payroll of all spending institutions of government.
Speaking at the Information Ministry regular press briefing Tuesday, the CSA boss noted that the Ministry of Mines and Energy had about 40 individuals taking pay but are not going to work adding that these individuals’ total monthly salaries amount to US $18,539 but have since been removed from the payroll.
At the same time, the Civil Service Agency Director-General disclosed that 81 individuals from the Ministry of Mines & Energy have been suspended without pay for missing eight working days; something he said, will save the government US$36,881 for one month.
Joekai maintained that at the Liberia Institute for Public Administration, 28 employees were dismissed and removed from government payroll for being absent for 14 to 20 working days thus serving the Government of Liberia US $17,597 every month.
Joekai pointed out that the National Center for the Coordinating and Response Mechanism after conducting the headcount and thorough verification, 12 individuals were removed from the payroll or failing to provide evidence of their employment with the entity from October to December of last year.
Director-General Joekai assured that the removal of the 12 ghost names from LIPA, will save the government US$25,708 monthly.
Joekai reiterated calls to forge partnerships with relevant government institutions whose services are relevant to tracking the discrepancies and unearthing the loopholes of personnel at various entities.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Civil Service Agency told reporters during the MICAT press briefing that there is a dashboard for spending entities, whereby the system offers a comprehensive dashboard view for heads of spending entities, providing real-time insights and analytics on employees under their purview.
According to him, the dashboard under the supervision of the Director General aims to monitor the overall interaction of entities and employees and their ability to make comments.
He stated that the physical verification and headcounts of employees have been conducted at 25 government spending entities while 4 government spending entities’ physical verification and headcounts are in progress.
The CSA boss then remained at the gathering to divulge to the public medium that the President is fully supportive of the critical national initiative of sanitizing the GOL payroll and is committed to providing the necessary resources to facilitate the Civil Service Agency and the General Auditing Commission’s effective execution of audits within the institution.
Since becoming head of the Civil Service Agency, Joekai has embraced the rescue agenda of fostering credibility across all government 103 spending entities and ensuring corruption-free institutions in line with President Joseph Boakai’s ARREST Agenda.
