A total of 390,676 civil servants  in 559 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have been captured on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System platform as of January 31, 2021, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, has said.

She made the disclosure at a press briefing in Abuja as part of activities to kickstart the 2021 Nigeria Civil Service Week The federal government had in 2006 introduced the IPPIS to weed out ghost workers from the civil service and automate salary payments for transparency and accountability in public expenditure.

In October 2019, the federal government directed workers in its MDAs to enroll on IPPIS. Recalled the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had last year gone on strike over the Federal Government insistence  that its members enroll in IPPIS

Last week,  the salaries of 331 civil servants cutting across all were suspended over their failure to update their records on IPPIS despite repeated directives to do so. According to Yemi-Esan, 390,676 staff across the 559 MDAs have now been captured on the platform.

She added that the figure excludes the army, paramilitary, police, and universities. “As of 31st January, 2021, a total number of 559 MDAs with 390,676 employees have been captured on the IPPIS platform. This figure excludes the Army, Para-Military, Police and Universities.

“Accordingly, several activities have been initiated and carried out by the Office towards driving, implementing and deployment of the Human Resource module of IPPIS.

“With full deployment of the HR Module of IPPIS, human error would be minimized through streamlined data, cost reduced based on available accurate data, financial and manpower resources efficiently and effectively utilized and planned for; while storage of data collected on employees of the Federal Public Service is secure and only accessible to authorized officers.”

Yemi-Esan said the civil service took advantage of COVID-19 to accelerate the digitalisation of its processes to enable it “continue to function effectively as the backbone of government within the new normal”. Yemi-Esan also disclosed that the process of reviewing the nation’s Public Service Rules was almost completed, saying it is ready for the approval of the Federal Executive Council.

Source: The Vanguard