The National Treasury is implementing systems that are aimed at curing public service of the chronic challenge of paying salaries to ghost workers.
“Government has begun a process to identify ghost workers and other payroll irregularities. Previous initiatives to uncover ghost workers relied on an inefficient census methodology.
National and provincial departments
“The new data-driven approach will integrate multiple administrative datasets, more easily detecting anomalies across national and provincial departments. Updates will be provided in the 2025 MTBPS,” said National Treasury director general Duncan Pieterse.
Pieterse also revealed that the National Treasury and provincial treasuries have assessed over R312-billion in spending programmes since 2013, highlighting shortcomings in policy costing, implementation and oversight that lead to duplication and waste.
“Previous reviews have identified savings of R37.5-billion that can be achieved from changes to operating models and improvements in oversight. In some cases, programmes no longer achieve their intended objectives and should be closed.”
He pointed out that to take these recommendations forward for the 2026 medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF) period, the budget process will be redesigned to close low-priority or underperforming programmes, and achieve greater efficiency in procurement, ICT and infrastructure management.
Public employment programmes
“The process will also implement reforms flowing from the recent review of public employment programmes and active labour market programmes discussed in the 2024 MTBPS.
“That review found that while the portfolio is comprehensive, the effectiveness and efficiency of individual programmes is mixed.
“Flowing from government’s recently initiated review of conditional grants, the National Treasury will implement a range of reforms to improve how infrastructure programmes and projects are planned, procured, contracted and implemented in provinces and municipalities,” said Pieterse.
Early retirement programme
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana revealed that the early retirement programme will continue. Although the allocation for this initiative has been revised down from R11-billion estimated in the 2024 medium-term budget policy statement to R5.5-billion across 2025/26 and 2026/27.
“Discussions with organised labour on the process are under way in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC). The allocation will be revisited on the conclusion of these consultations as part of the next budget process.
“Although functions that are not parties to the PSCBC process – such as the Department of Defence – can proceed with implementation,” said Godongwana.
