REFORM Archives

Local Government Payroll Validation Seminar Ends

MONROVIA – Liberia’s grip on loopholes in the public sector payroll is proving cumbersome – thanks to the geniuses of payroll paddlers. And so, the Liberia Macroeconomic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC) and the Civil Service Agency (CSA) have concluded a seminar that begins the validation of payroll for the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), especially local government structures.

LIMPAC, a research Think Tank of the Government of Liberia, chaired by the Minister of Finance and Development Planning assembled local government officials and payroll analyst from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “The training brings together county officials and an Analyst from MIA which accounts for the third largest agency of government with the most amounts of employees,” Del-Francis Wreh, Executive Director of LIMPAC explained.

He said the training brought everyone to the table including Superintendents, MIA, CSA, and MFDP so as to look at the payroll of each county. The total manpower strength of MIA is around 5300 and the Process also provides maximum education to the county officials about the ongoing pay reform that is currently being implemented.

The verification training is said to be targeting the Ministry of Internal Affairs especially the local government payroll as part of efforts to efficiently and collaboratively clean the payroll of all government ministries and agencies. “Additional action the government intends to take to clean the payroll is the Taskforce on Ghost Removal setup by the Cabinet. And the local government payroll is a critical aspect of that exercise along with others who the taskforce will be visiting to do headcount of employees”, he said.

He said “the last three days, we have completed cleaning 10 counties correcting 80 percent of the problems on the payroll. We will work with the local authority to ensure we have an efficient payroll that shows value for money. For the next step, there is going to be periodic reconciliation of the local government payroll”.

For James Thompson, Acting Director General of the Civil Service Agency (CSA), this is all part of efforts to get a handle on ghosts and to end payroll paddling across ministries and agencies. “After this exercise, we would have trimmed the wage size of the government. Verification to me shows those we are carrying are the appropriate staff of the Agency of government”.

He said “we are trying to make sure we finally get a handle on ghost workers. We are bringing the county officials and central administration to know who the real people are. We want to make sure the government is getting value for money spent on wages.

Source: https://frontpageafricaonline.com/

LIMPAC Completes Two Weeks Intensive Training for CSA Staffs AS HARMONIZATION TEAM TRANSITIONS PAYROLL ACTIVITIES TO CSA

The Liberia Macroeconomic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC), the lead unit within the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning for the on-going national pay harmonization exercise has completed two-week intensive training for staff of the civil Service Agency. The two weeks training focused on operations of the Government of Automated Payroll System, the Alternative Temporary Automated Payroll System (ATAPS).

Ms. Amelia Gweh executivng ATAPS new employment function

The main purpose of the training was to build the capacity of the CSA staff in effectively operating the ATAPS for smooth processing payroll and related activities for all GoL spending entities as the Interagency Harmonization Team gradually turn over rudimentary employment and payroll services and activities over to the Civil Service Agency. These periodic employment and payroll related activities include deletion and addition of employees for various administrative and other reasons, updates of staff promotions , and staff personal records; including the national biometric identification number, county of assignments, email addresses, cellphone numbers, etc.

The training which ended on Friday March 20, 2020 benefited more than 20 employees of the Civil Service Agency, mainly from within the Employment Service and Payroll Divisions. These staffs are now trained to process the payroll, create new employment, manage existing employments; including , termination of employments, and remove ghost names using ATAPS. The trainers were Miss Mabintu Mansaray , Senior Policy Research at LIMPAC, and Miss Amelia M. Gweh, Senior Budget Software Development Specialist within the Department of Budget at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.

At the close of the training, the CSA Acting Director General, Hon. Jimmy Thompson, encouraged the CSA staff to full utilize skills from the training as the CSA strives to modernize the procedures for employment and payment within central government.

For his part Hon. Del-Francis Wreh, Executive Director of LIMPAC thanked the trainers for their willingness in conducting the training and transferring knowledge to the CSA staff at this critical stage of the wage reform exercise in Liberia. Mr. Wreh also thanked the CSA staff for their enthusiasm shown to learn and operate ATAPS, the new but temporary automated payroll system.

The Alternative Temporary Automated Payroll system (ATAPS) is a locally built software that is currently used by the Government of Liberia in automating employment and payroll processes across the government since the implementation of the National Harmonization Exercise in July 2019. Through ATAPS, the Government of Liberia through the National Payroll Clean-up Task Force has started automating the retirement of eligible employees and blocking the salaries of the suspected ghost employees across the public sector.