By MILDRED KATONGO –
SEVERAL banks and other money-lenders have been swindled by crooked civil servants who forged pay-slips to obtain loans at different financial institutions, the Office of the President has revealed.
However, the introduction of electronic pay slips by the Government has helped to stop the thieving and will save the government a whopping US$7.2 million spent on printing the pay statements.
More than 100,000 civil servants out of the total 209,000 are now on e-pay slips.
Office of the President e-Government Division Permanent Secretary Martine Mtonga confirmed in an interview in Ndola yesterday the system had enabled the Government to exorcise the payroll of ‘ghost workers’.
“The system has cut out some of the pay slips which were coming from ‘Matero’. Some workers used to get a pay slip to get a loan from one bank and make another to get a loan from another bank. So banks were being swindled, but through the e-pay slip system we have cut out that tendency,” Dr Mtonga said.
He said the Government had agreed on modalities with the banks to receive pay slips electronically for all workers wanting to access loans.
“We have so far loaded 100,000 workers on the system and by the end of this month we will load about 120,000 workers. By the end of December all Government workers will be on e-pay slips,” Mtonga said.
Dr Mtonga said the system would translate in huge savings for the Government which was spending US$7.2 million paper to print the pay slips.
He said the last pay slips printed manually were in August and their contract obligation with the suppliers of the required paper ended last month. There have since been no more new contracts awarded.