By Rachel Mohamed
The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has mandated that all government departments conduct a full physical verification of their employees by the end of February 28, 2026. The initiative seeks to eliminate “ghost workers” while also ensuring accurate payroll and human resource systems.
In an interview with VOC News, Claude Naicker of the Public Servants Association (PSA) stated that the PSA was the first to bring this issue to the attention of the Department of Education. This occurred about 10 to 15 years ago, when old teachers and those in the education field were asked to physically bring their identity documents and verify themselves, and the department discovered a number of fictitious employees on the payroll system.
“The second issue is that the government recently introduced what is known as the Early Retirement Package. We were skeptical of this because we believe that if the government is going to consider an early retirement package for employees, imagine paying out pension benefits and incentives to the tune of nearly half a million rand that are currently not on the system; in other words, they are fictitious or ghost employees,” said Naicker.
Listen to the full interview:
VOC News
Photo: Pixabay
