Question NW948 to the Minister of Public Service and Administration
09 April 2021 - NW948
Gondwe, Dr M to ask the Minister of Public Service and Administration
(1)How often does his department verify the data on the Persal system in an effort to ensure (a) its accuracy and (b) that there are no ghost employees on the system; (2) what are the reasons that some government departments are still making use of manual pay slips as opposed to electronic pay slips despite the fact that electronic pay slips contribute towards the reduction of printing costs and root out ghost employees in the public service; (3) by what date is it envisaged that the Government will phase out the manual submission and formally introduce electronic submission of leave forms for Public Service employees as part of modernising the public service?
Reply:
1. Each department is required to verify the payroll reports on a monthly basis to ensure that every employee receiving payment from the department is eligible for such payment.
a) The capturing, maintenance and verification of data on PERSAL is a decentralised responsibility of each relevant Head of Department. Therefore it is the responsibility of each Head of Department to assign a designated employee as a PERSAL controller to manage data accuracy. PERSAL controllers in every department are accountable for institutionalizing, maintaining and communicating procedures to ensure continuous control over access, security and maintenance of data records within their departments.
b) Treasury Regulations prescribe the verification of payroll reports to ensure that only legitimately employed persons receive payment. According to Treasury Regulation 8.3.4:
“For all employees, the person in charge at the respective pay-points must certify on the date of payment that all persons listed on the payroll report are entitled to payment. Employees paid by cheque must sign the payroll report when collecting their cheques.” Regulation 8.3.4 further specifies “These payroll reports must then be returned to the Chief Financial Officer of the department within 10 days and the accounting officer must ensure that all pay-point certificates have been received on a monthly basis.”
2. There is no specific set date for the complete phasing out of manual submission as the relevant technology platform is currently not capable of on-boarding all government departments at the same time. The introduction of electronic payslips is therefore, being rolled out in a phased approach. The migrating of departmental users to an electronic payslip platform requires a close partnership between the PERSAL controllers at National Treasury, department specific HRM employees working on PERSAL, Government Information Technology Officer (GITO) per department, the account management team at SITA as well as their mainframe team. This process impacts the on-boarding process as it depends on the readiness of specific departments to move to an electronic payslip platform at different times depending on the time departments receive the proposal from SITA, process it and verify employees and their respective email addresses to ensure the correct payslip goes to the correct employee. It has also been indicated by some departments that not all employees have access to emails which impacts on their ability to access electronic payslips.
3. The automation of leave is part of the functionality to be provided by the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS). National Treasury, which is the lead department in the IFMS Programme, is currently in the process of appointing a service provider to design the system to meet the requirements of the Public Service. Once this has been completed and the IFMS implemented, the system will address, amongst others, the automation of leave.
In view of the above, it is not possible to indicate at this stage on which date manual leave forms will be phased out and replaced with an electronic system.
End