Govt pursues civil service authentication exercise

Harare (New Ziana) –The Public Service Commission (PSC) says a biometric authentication exercise of all personnel in the civil service has so far recorded commendable success.

In a statement, the Public Service Commission said the authentication exercise was part of a broad range of public sector reforms.

It said the process involved authenticating all workers on the government payroll through a comparison of information on the payroll with biometric data contained on a data base maintained at the Registrar General’s office.

“With the support of the World Bank, the government has made headway in the biometric authentication of civil servants. While very few personnel still need their biometric attributes to be reflected in the Registrar General’s data base and are expected to regularise their status in response to government stopping their salaries, the compliance registered so far is 99.53 percent,” the PSC said.

“While the high compliance percentage inspires confidence about the integrity of the government payroll, the objective remains that of verifying every single name on the payroll. The cessation of salaries for personnel until they regularize their biometric status at the Registrar General’s office has proved most effective in encouraging government employees to take action in their own interest.”

The PSC added; “The government of Zimbabwe remains committed to its values of accountability, transparency and zero tolerance to corruption and the biometric authentication exercise is one of the many successful public sector reform programmes being pursued in the Second Republic.”
New Ziana