Biometrics, in a time and attendance capacity, can weed out systemic inefficiency and forms of corruption. As we explored in Time & Attendance Month, a form of time fraud is the practice of hiring ghost workers, and biometric technologies can be deployed to successfully crack down on this practice. Kaduna State, a state located in the North West of Nigeria, is undertaking a biometrics driven initiative to do just that: to build an accurate manifest of civil servants, ensuring that government funds aren’t being wasted on non-existent people listed on the payroll.
Billions of naira, salaried per month, are at stake here. The Kaduna State Government is therefore requiring personnel to present their letter of appointment, letter of promotion and an ID – which can be a driver’s license, a voter’s card, a national identity card or an international passport – in order to guarantee that they are in fact real, live workers. The verification process is scheduled to take place on July 8, and the State Government has partnered with two banks – United Bank for Africa and Zenith Bank – for the updating of the civil service payroll.
The Nigerian government has been employing the use of biometrics in the fight against ghost workers for some time now. According to Aniviz Global’s Chris Palmer – in a FindBiometrics Guest Feature we ran on the site last year – using biometric devices at payroll distribution centers, working in tandem with biometric registration offices, by mid-2013 the nation had identified approximately 46,500 ghost workers and removed them from the records, saving 118.9 billion naira.
Source: Premium Times
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June 25, 2015 – by Peter B. Counter
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