Wrong ghost workers may appeal

Public servants who feel they had been wrongly identified as ‘ghost workers’ during the exercise to purge phantom employees in the country, can now appeal to the responsible ministry in order to get their jobs back.

This was said here yesterday by  Minister of State in the President’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Government), Mr George Simbachawene, when gracing the 9th Stakeholders Conference for the Local Authorities Provident Fund (LAPF).

“As long as the wrongly jettisoned workers have the right documents, they should present them to my ministry,” said Mr Simbachawene, adding that during the countrywide exercise, it was possible that some mistakes could have been made.

Many state organisations and public offices do not have modern systems of filing and it is possible that some workers’ records, archives and documents were either lost, misplaced or mishandled to an extent of causing others to lose their jobs.

The government wants to correct that,” added the minister. Mr Simbachawene pointed out that some record keepers in public offices were incompetent or overtaken by modern technology and therefore in some situations, mistakes could be made, including when raking out non-existent workers from public employment.

The number of public ghost workers in the country had reportedly reached 19,708 by January 31, this year and according to the Minister of State in the President’s Office responsible for Public Service Management and Good Governance, Ms Angellah Kairuki, flushing out such phantoms enabled the government to save nearly 10 million US dollars.

In a different development, the minister of state has advised all provident fund schemes to increase their average pensions to retirees from the current 50,000/- to at least 100,000/- per month in order to help them cope with the rising costs of living.

Meanwhile, the three urban councils from the two Northern Zone regions of Arusha and Kilimanjaro have topped all other councils in the country in remitting their workers’ contributions to the Local Authorities Provident Fund (LAPF) pool.

According to the LAPF Board Chairman, Professor Faustine Bee, the Moshi Municipal Council (Kilimanjaro), topped the bill and was awarded 7m/-, followed by the Arusha City Council (Arusha), which got 5m/- and in the third position was Same District Council (Kilimanjaro), which went home with 3m/.