CHALLENGE: solution to eradicate ghost workers syndrome

Please refer to the thread "Malipo mishahara dirishani" as a background to this request for ideas and solutions that can be availed to our esteemed government officials in eradicating the ghost workers issue.

Can a technical solution be developed that addresses this issue, a solution that is progressive, and can meet the challenges of managing a diverse number of stakeholders?

What I hope for is a summary on how a technical solution can be made available to developers to come up with the product(s) that can be build collaboratively to focus the minds of the developers as well as the customer (government) on solutions that can be built by local experts in the IT field.

To start off, can the issues arising from the current planned arrangements by the government be collated in this header thread from which summary briefings can be made from the various contributors.


Over to you...

first thing will be getting explanation from someone on how money flow from budget toworker's salary including signatories and approvers!

Could simplify the requirements with following assumptions.

1). Budgetary requirements have been met, and this is more an audit requirement to establish that the payee is an existing employee.
2). Choice of probable beneficiary: Ministry of education.
With this client, there are known number of schools nationwide, and the logical placement of these is managed by the relevant regional authorities, which could in turn be split up further as necessary to manage the education matters for their regional segment.
3). Term of service records are available for each employee (start date -> end date, Learning leave, health leave, death notification).

With such categorization in mind, I can envisage that an employee will be attached to a given school, hence a given regional authority.
At any one school, there will be a number of employees who can form a legal basis of establishing who is actually employed or not.
Example: Each employee fills in a declaration periodically stating fellow members of staff. This tracking method will mean, if there is 15 teaching staff that receives payment from the government, they will all have to vouch for each other on eligibility. No payment is disbursed for any listed member who does not have the clearance as per fellow employees. If this system is implemented as a legal framework, the onus will be on each employee to authenticate fellow employees hence removing the ghost issue.

Type of solution
Online system
Pros: Remove the costs associated with travel for the employees in this exercise requiring physical verification
Online information capture speeds up auditing tasks by eliminating secondary data entry tasks
Information received at the ministry level can be verified back to the individual school, meaning tamparing with the records can easily be tracked back....

Cons: IT knowhow, limited in places as well as luck of network availability...

kotinkarwak said:

Please refer to the thread "Malipo mishahara dirishani" as a background to this request for ideas and solutions that can be availed to our esteemed government officials in eradicating the ghost workers issue.

Can a technical solution be developed that addresses this issue, a solution that is progressive, and can meet the challenges of managing a diverse number of stakeholders?

What I hope for is a summary on how a technical solution can be made available to developers to come up with the product(s) that can be build collaboratively to focus the minds of the developers as well as the customer (government) on solutions that can be built by local experts in the IT field.

To start off, can the issues arising from the current planned arrangements by the government be collated in this header thread from which summary briefings can be made from the various contributors.


Over to you...

Click to expand...

It is not easy to eradicate ghost workers scam as it is an inside Job. Na un exiting ghost workers mara nyingi ni walimu, Polisi. etc.

That's a very defeatist standpoint. If we let the status quo to persist, then we will never get rid of the scum in our society.
What is transpiring now is that, the law abiding citizens are being punished almost daily due to the many years of allowing the status quo, We need new driving license, new this new that, which we have to pay for from our own pocket. Now this saga on teachers/government employee's wages, meaning if you are away from your station, it will cost you to simply attend the face to face exercises, which as you say will not necessarily resolve the issue at hand, but the poor employee will have lost considerable amount on money by the end of the exercise.

Anyway, the exercise here is meant to challenge the IT folks to come up with a viable solution to such a problem (assuming that "wenye nazo" will not go against such a system being implemented) more like, "this is how I would go about it", and not necessarily the technology to be used.

Tanzanian government losses approx TZS 9bn/- monthly for ghost workers salary. That is a huge amount guys.

Kwa kifupi, hizi pesa hazipotei kwa bahati mbaya, na wala sio kwamba serikali ya tanzania imeshindwa kabisa kutumia mfumo madhubuti wa kuwatambua wafanyakazi hewa.

Kwanza kabisa, Tanzania sio nchi pekee yenye serikali hapa duniani. Kila nchi ina serikali na ina wafanyakazi wa umma na hivyo basi kama serikali ingetaka ushauri juu ya kupambana na wafanyakazi hewa, ingeweza tu kufanya consultation kwa nchi ambayo imefanikiwa kwenye hili. That simple. Nchi zenye mfumo madhubuti wa malipo wa wafanyakazi wa uma zipo nyingi tu na sina haja ya kuzitaja hapa.

Serikali inahaha kubana matumizi kutokana na uhaba wa kifedha ambao inakabiliana nao kwa sasa. Lakini suala la ghost workers ni biashara ya wakubwa na sio ukweli kwamba serikali imeshindwa kubaini account hewa. Kuna mvutano kati ya "wanaonufaika na hili" na wale wanaohaha kujitahidi kubana matumizi ya serikali yasiyo ya lazima.

Kwa kifupi, hichi sio kitu unachoweza kukiita "tatizo" kwa maana ya kwamba serikali imeshindwa na hivyo inatafuta msaada. Kama lingekuwa ni tatizo kwa serikali na serikali inahitaji msaada ingekuwa imeshaupata muda mrefu tu. Wafanyakazi hewa wanafahamika na pesa zinakopotelea kunafahamika pia.

Kama serikali ikitaka kwa dhati kuwaondoa wafanyakazi hewa inaweza kufanya hata leo.

My two cents.

Ram

Nadhani hata nchi zilizoendelea wana hili tatizo na hapo inaonyesha kuwa, HR department haifanyi kazi ipaswavyo.
Life cycle ya mfanyakazi is a moving goal post, atakuwa kazini, likizo, anaumwa, amechukua likizo ya mafunzo, na mwishowe amefariki. Sasa kama system ya kum'manage mfanyakazi ina mapengo kibao na hata kujua generally ni wafanyakazi wangapi serikali inayo ni shida, kweli wajanja wengi wataitumia fursa hiyo kujiongezea kipato. Ndio inawezekana kuwa ni hao hao wakubwa, lakini kama mapengo ni kama hivi yalivyo, hata pale chini kabisa watu watapata ujanja. Tunasikia shule ya wanafunzi zaidi ya 500, mwalimu mmoja, sasa kwenye halmashauri, si watu wanaweza kufanya ujanja na kupokea mishahara ya walimu hata 20 kwa hii shule moja?

Kwa hiyo, tusubiri hali iwe mbaya sana kwa wanaotupa misaada washindwe kutu'support ndio mambo kama haya itabidi serikali iyatatue ki'ukweli.

kotinkarwak said:

That's a very defeatist standpoint. If we let the status quo to persist, then we will never get rid of the scum in our society.

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Am not sure if u are responding to my comment. Ghost worker problem does not need IT technical solution. I knowreal scenario how it happen.from accouting process. Its more of a human( Employer/employee) side of problem rather tnan loophole in the process. Kama huna wafanyakazi waaaminifu tena wako upande wakushughulishia mishahara ni maumivu. Unless You assume that the solution will be 100% computerised and no manual intevention.

What is transpiring now is that, the law abiding citizens are being punished almost daily due to the many years of allowing the status quo, We need new driving license, new this new that, which we have to pay for from our own pocket. Now this saga on teachers/government employee's wages, meaning if you are away from your station, it will cost you to simply attend the face to face exercises, which as you say will not necessarily resolve the issue at hand, but the poor employee will have lost considerable amount on money by the end of the exercise.

Click to expand...

U re right but the problem wich ever way u might like to view it is caused by greedy employees and or goverment (employer) not paying well employees working in critical section.

Anyway, the exercise here is meant to challenge the IT folks to come up with a viable solution to such a problem (assuming that "wenye nazo" will not go against such a system being implemented) more like, "this is how I would go about it", and not necessarily the technology to be used.

Click to expand...

Konti You are challenge is good but i also presented what i know ( from experince/observation) so that who ever IT folks comes with the solution doesnt ingonre the manual/human part. So far kuna computer system. So dont assume there isnt a system. Ukifanya assumtion hiyo then you will end having similar problem .

Remember sometime IT folks get it wrong because we/they concetrate too much on technology and ignore other computer systems players.

Zing,
Thanks for the response.
I will assume that there is a system be it paper or computerized to meet the challenges of managing the numbers we talking about.
The shortfalls in the current processes, this meaning, the system could be operating fine but there exists some loopholes that people are utilizing to siphon off the many billions of shillings.
Now our query would be, is the current auditing process robust enough to identify these issues, since from what I would assume is that, the audit is performed based on given data and perceived processes on the said data, meaning will not be able to identify issues.
The example I gave on a school with only 1 "registered" teacher is a case in point. It would go unnoticed if a thieving employee at whatever level of the command chain decided to add up fictitious employees to the payroll. If it is assumed that a school will have 25 employees, then the auditing process will definitely miss this entry hence the country will lose that money.
If a system does exist on managing numbers, it might just be a change in policy to introduce new processes to check these numbers hence the challenge.

Remember, whether the pay packet is adequate or not does not permit this shoddy dealings, and the losers are all of us since the few are benefiting while many lose out.
The challenge here was assuming that everything is done from scratch since we would not have access to the current system methods and processes, a challenge to engage the minds of the IT fraternity in building up a solution robust enough to meet this and any other challenges. A learning process you might add.
I posed this challenge to simply balance the argument that there are no relevant skills in our country resulting in software to be brought in from other countries. I know this has been discussed to death on what the IT sector is doing in terms of software development and was highlighted that for in-house software and some bespoke ones, we may never get wind of their existence since they are for individual organizations, but this challenge was to see what can be developed in collaboration, hopefully allow for the sector to put faces to names and allow for them to meet on a given platform, a challenge.

sikujua kuwa hili tatizo ni kubwa kiasi cha search results zinazopatikana ukitafuta "ghost workers tanzania" on google.

Ukipata muda, pitia hii document, uone kama kweli kuna system ya kukabiriana na hii ishu, serikali bado haijaipata, exercise nying zimefanyika lakini bado!!

http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/civilservice/casestudy3tanzania.pdf