South Sudan’s Interior Minister Aleu Ayeny Aleu has revealed that there is corruption in various organized services, saying there are many ‘ghost workers’ in the police, fire brigade and prison services, a problem made worse recently by large-scale defections in some areas.
These employees have not all yet been eliminated from the payroll, said Gen. Aleu, speaking at a meeting with officers from all the departments in the interior ministry’s premises yesterday.
Last year, the Ministry of Interior and Wildlife Conservation revealed that they estimated there were thousands of ghost names in the police service payroll which needed to be screened out. Some of the workers had died or had stopped working, but had not been removed from the payroll. The report further said 16,000 names were under the investigation, meaning about half of the police on the payroll are fake.
The official says as soon as he was appointed by the president as the interior minister he was able to recover an amount of 1,950 million SSP by eliminating ghost names from the police payroll and presented the money to the cabinet.
He says these funds were then used for vehicles, uniforms and other expenses of the services.
The minister revealed that the Fire Brigade Service have not yet brought its list of ghost names up till now: “I used to tell the Fire Brigade that you bring your ghost names, I think they refused totally to respond to my call”.
“I will not give them vehicles when they come to ask for vehicles from the police department because they do not want to bring their ghost names,” he added.
The interior minister affirmed the need to thoroughly study the police leadership working with him in the ministry and then he can be able to compile a report to the president against whoever is involved in corruption charges in the ministry.
He also outright accused the recently dissolved Salary Payment Committee of failure to control the payment of salaries to the various services. Ayeny indicated that the budget of the police did not change and remained paid out at the same levels despite massive defection of members of the services to the rebels.
According to Aleu, the same problem followed the rebellion of David Yau Yau in 2010. Despite the defection of many officers in Pibor County, their names were reportedly not removed from the payroll.