Senior Economist Calls for Zimbabwe Gov’t to Implement Biometric Payroll

A Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe senior economist, Prosper Chitambara, is advising the government to implement a biometric payroll system.

The suggestion was put forward at a National Economic Consultative Forum workshop, and follows up on auditing efforts set in motion last year to assess the salaries in place for government and state-affiliated agencies, which have yet to seriously reduce excesses, according to Zimbabwe’s The Herald. Chitambara pointed to biometric payroll efforts in Nigeria and Kenya, in which “public service employees and pensioners can be accurately identified and remove ghost workers from the payroll.”

Chitambara said that through these efforts those countries had cut their public sector compensation payments by 20 and 25 percent respectively. Indeed, recently DERMALOG, which provided ABIS technology to Nigeria’s banks, proclaimed that its efforts would save that country’s government $11.5 million per year.

Meanwhile, there may be growing interest in biometric technology in Zimbabwe generally, with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission recently mulling the implementation of biometric polling for the country’s 2018 election. While such a move is by no means certain given the country’s political climate, there is certainly potential for government authorities to be interested in the idea of using biometrics to help cut salary fraud in the public service and save money.

Source: The Herald via AllAfrica

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April 14, 2016 – by Alex Perala