The Federal Government will on Friday stop the salaries of any public officer whose records could not be verified on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.
This was made known in a statement signed by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, and made available to journalists by her Director of Communications, Mohammed Ahmed, on Wednesday.
According to the statement, a two-week verification, which will end on Friday, October 27, 2023, was put in place as an act of magnanimity for officers who did not participate in the earlier verifications.
“Adequate arrangements were put in place for a smooth exercise in designated areas of the FCT, however, the officers’ impatience and lack of orderliness in the first two days made the exercise rowdy. This has been duly addressed and the two-week exercise, scheduled to end on Friday, October 27, 2023, is progressing very well.
“The verification of records of all civil servants will be finalised at the end of the ongoing exercise and any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of government,” the statement read.
It recalled that in 2013, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, being the repository of official records and information on all public servants, was saddled with the responsibility of cleansing the record on the payroll.
Leveraging technology, the statement added that the office opened a verification portal in April 2017 and directed all public servants to carry out online updates of their records.
The office, it added, carried out aggressive sensitisation and publicity via official, conventional, and social media.
According to the statement, an initial period of three months was given for compliance, which was extended to one year, May 2018, to enable all officers to update their records.
The statement added, “Sequel to another wide publicity accompanied by numerous pre-verification sensitisation visits by IPPIS staff to Ministries, extra-ministerial Departments, and Agencies nationwide, the second phase of the exercise, the physical verification, commenced in 2018.
“In this regard, 500 staff from the OHCSF were trained and deployed, in well-communicated and coordinated phases, to the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT between 2018 and 2019 to enable officers to carry out the physical verification in their states and save them to from traveling to Abuja.”
The statement further maintained that some erring officers’ pleas to be given the last opportunity to comply were granted, adding that the portal was, therefore, reopened from October 3-13, 2023, for them to update their records and now to Friday, October 27, 2023, before action is taken on defaulters.
