Head count exercise scare Malawi civil servants: Crackdown on Ghost workers

Malawi government decision to head count each and every civil servant has met with resistance from some quarters amid fears of ‘ghost workers’ and recruitment without following procedures fears.

Ministry of finance spokesperson Nations Msowoya confirmed the exercise is going on now and that his ministry is doing the civil service population census.

“We want to curb theft in government,” he said.

There are fears of hundreds if not thousands of ghost workers in civil service and another bunch of hundreds of civil servants who never went through normal government recruitment procedures but were picked simply because of connections to powerful people.

Among others, enumerators are asking for letters of appointment, academic qualifications certificates and pay slips.

However, some civil servants are said to be jittery over the exercise fearing for their jobs.

But Msowoya assured there is no need to panic as the exercise is normal.

In the 1990s the government did the same exercise in the ministry of education and managed to wipe out thousands of ghost workers, names which were on payroll but real teachers never existed.