The Government Pensions Office has suspended 11 workers
suspected of making payments to ghost workers and fast-tracking payouts to
favoured individuals.
The 11 officers were sent home to pave way for
investigations and they face prosecution or dismissal from employment if found
guilty of improper conduct.
The Pensions Office pays out pensions, gratuities and other
benefits to State workers or their heirs on retirement, discharge, resignation,
death or any other termination of service.
Public Service Commission (PSC) Secretary Ambassador
Jonathan Wutaunashe confirmed the suspension of the 11 employees.
“We have done this to facilitate investigations into the
possibility of irregular payments that could have been made and non-adherence
to proper procedures in the processing of pension payments.”
A source in the pensions office said the investigations
would focus on whether certain payments were made to real pensioners and
whether there might have been undue acceleration of pension disbursements to
individuals.
This comes against the backdrop of this week’s sacking of
PSC paymaster at the Salary Services Bureau (SSB) Brighton Chiuzingo.
The SSB is the public service pay point, through which
employees in Government get their remuneration.
Chiuzingo was on suspension from December last year
following reports of abuse of office and mismanagement, pending investigations.
According to authoritative sources at the SSB, the
investigations did find improper conduct and Chiuzingo was found guilty and
sacked. Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment