The Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dr Dasuki Arabi, says the introduction of Integration Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) has reduced the Federal Civil Service personnel to 720,000.
According to him, the IPPIS led to the weeding out of about 70,000 ghost workers from the service and hence saving the Federal Government of over N220 billion.
Arabi stated this while appearing at the 43rd Session of the ministerial media briefing organised by the Presidential Media Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Thursday. While giving key updates on the performance of the bureau in the execution of its core mandate, particularly in ensuring the full implementation of reform policies and programmes for the government, Arabi said the government also saved N10 trillion following the introduction of the Single Treasury Account (TSA). “These are some of the benefits that we think government or Nigerians have benefited out of the work that we have been doing in collaboration with other agencies of government, where they, with the introduction of IPPIS, about 70,000 ghost workers have been eliminated from the payroll.
“We have a one shot opportunity to look at IPPIS and say, as at today, we have 720,000 public servants working for Nigeria.
“This is a great achievement which I think we need to encode and we need to get it celebrated by all of us.
”We’ve been able to reduce more than N220 billion wastage through wrong management of IPPIS on payroll by Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government. We have reduced the budget deficits and change the budget composition.
“We have succeeded in getting the Treasury Single Account deployed in all ministries, departments and agencies of government.
”Challenges have come in that implementation at the initial stage, but we are overcoming that and government is able to save over N10 trillion over the years because whatever you’re generating now goes into a Treasury Single Account that is managed by somebody else, not you.
“And government, especially at the top is always able to see what has come into our Treasury Single Account today and what has gone out of that. “So, planning has been simplified. Budgeting has been simplified.
“Our distribution and allocation of resources have been simplified and streamlined.”
The director-general said as part of the reforms in the service, the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIGMIS) had made government business paperless.
According to him, it has reduced man to man contact and processing, payments in ministries, departments and agencies of governmentwhile transparency has been improved as a lot of other things are done even outside the office.