The move comes after Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon inaugurated the project last July and claimed that as many as 26,000 “ghost” employees were working in different government departments, and that the exchequer could save Rs6 billion by removing them.
Referring to government records, the Memon had said that 0.410 million employees were registered with the Sindh Government, of whom 0.328 million had computerised NICs and 73,800 were not registered with the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra). Salaries were being released to 338 employees who had passed away, Memon had claimed. Another 12,064 employees were drawing double salaries, while over 16,000 NICs had been identified bearing fake ages of their respective card holders. The computerisation of government employees’ data, Memon had said, would discourage the trend.
While providing information about the project, additional secretary of the services department said that information of nearly 0.5 million employees would be computerised in the first phase. Retired employees have been asked to submit details of their service book, pension book, bank accounts, postal address and immediate relatives. The services general administration and coordination department will then provide these details to Nadra, which will issue the smart cards.
The data will be computerised in three phases, from 1947 to 1968, 1969 to 1979 and 1980 to 2012. The process will initiate from Karachi, then cover Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas and Larkana. Officials said that pensioners would be required to pay Rs100 for the smart card.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 20th, 2012.
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Why don't they issue "salary card" to eliminate ghost employees from All government departments as well as PublicSector Enterprises? Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Steel Mills have thousands of "ghost employees" causing huge loss to the taxpayers !!