Minister of Finance, Ahmed Zainab, on Thursday, told the Senate Committee on Finance that certain agencies of government were not comfortable with the migration of employees of the government to the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
She mentioned the Military and the Police among federal agencies are smarting to frustrate the initiative which she revealed has saved the government the sum of N250Billion.
Honourable Ahmed told the Committee led by Senator Olamilekan Adeola that her office has not given up in engaging those agencies to be enrolled on the automated platform.
She said:” The IPPIS is the Integrated payroll system of the government. So far, we have been able to put most federal government agencies on the platform.
“It helps us to control practices in the past because we used to have those that were not supposed to be on the payroll. The Military, the police and most agencies of government except for a few tertiary institutions are still resisting but we have been engaging them and we are in the process of uploading them into the system.
“The resistance to the IPPIS is misplaced as far as I am concerned because there is no agency of government that must resist it. It must be treated with utmost importance. The universities have some peculiarities. Some medical institutions too.
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“For instance, a consultant can consult in different hospitals but he should still have one primary point of employment. A lecturer, based on the approval given by the Minister is also allowed to lecture in more than one universities.
“That, however, does not mean that he should feature in all the instructions as a staff member. At best, there would be Special allowances that would be due to them for those extra work. The allowances should, however, not be included in the payroll.
“We have been discussing with them and we are arranging peculiar allowances for them too.
“This is to make sure that the extra work they do, according to the limits that is allowed, is provided for in the payroll. They have understood now that their concerns would be addressed and they have started working with us. As we speak, the Accountant General staff are on the field trying to capture the last batch of the staff into the IPPIS.
” It has been extremely beneficial because we have had savings up to about N250bn from the exercise and the savings would be more when we integrate the HI component of the IPPIS which is controlled by the Head of Service. It is a record of staff.
“When a staff retired from the service, the system will automatically log him out. At the moment we await instructions before we log out retired staff. Some people have retired but they are still on the payroll, so there are lots of cleaning up that we have to do. We have been working with the Head of Service to Fastrack that integration.
The Finance Minister equally admitted that the huge sum of N3.3tn for personnel cost in a budget proposal of N10.3tn was worrisome.
“We have a national problem of low productivity, especially within government. Our personnel cost in the 2020 budget proposal is N3.3tn from a budget size of N10.3tn. We should collectively work together to see how we can reduce the cost. If we cannot reduce the cost, we should be able to maximize the staff that we have and how we can increase their productivity. When we compare a staff cost of N3.3tn and a capital of N2.1tn, it is a mismatch. We are definitely portraying ourselves as a nation that our concentration is not on developmental projects but on consumption. It is something that had build up over time. We have to do something that are unpopular, bold and radical step to make a difference. It is not what the executive alone can do, we will be urging the National Assembly to support us when we want to take some radical actions in order to increase productivity not just in the public service but also nationally.”
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