Over 40,000 illegal civil servants were found in the government of Liberia, the Western media reported on Friday.
The reason behind it is that the information of government officials was inaccurately or incompletely recorded in the Personnel Action Notice (PAN), which is an obligatory prerequisite procedure for employment, Josiah Joekai, the director general of the Civil Service Agency, told the media.
According to Joekai, there are at least 70,000 civil servants in Liberia, and over 50% of them are now considered illegal as they have not undergone the PAN process.
The procedure involves collecting complete information about individuals who are added to the government's employee list after undergoing an assessment and credentials check, the report said.
However, between 2019 and 2023, some employees were added to the civil service payroll via text messaging, phone calls, emails, and WhatsApp, Joekai reportedly disclosed. Now, as they cannot be accountable for these mistakes, such civil servants are granted a 90-day grace period to register correctly. Otherwise, they will be fired.
In Kenya, the problem with civil servants has gone even further: while in Liberia civil servants actually exist, in the East African country about 20,000 jobs are occupied by ghost workers. Such fictitious labor has cost the state at least $40.3 million.
The state is dealing with the problem: it has launched the Unified Human Resource system, which will consolidate human resources and payroll data in the public service for access through "a single warehouse," and by July all state agencies and businesses, commissions, and independent offices will be connected to it.
The country's president William Ruto's administration plans to "continue to transform the public service sector to make it more responsive to people's needs."