Mozambique busts '30,000 ghost workers'

Image source, AFP

Image caption, The southern African nation is ranked 153 out of 180 countries in a global corruption perceptions index

Mozambique's government has discovered more than 30,000 ghost workers on the civil service payroll.

The civil service minister said some were paid for jobs they had not done, others were dead or fictitious.

The fraud had cost the government around $250m (拢198m) between 2015 and 2017, Carmelita Namashulua said.

She said the government recognised that state corruption was still a major problem in Mozambique, one of the world's poorest nations.

in its global corruption perceptions index.

Ms Namashulua said other serious challenges facing the country included favouritism, nepotism, illicit charges for admitting people to jobs in public administration and the falsification of licences.

The 大象传媒's Jose Tembe in the capital, Maputo, says the government carried out proof-of-life tests, meaning that all civil service employees had to appear in person at a specified office to prove that they really existed.

More on Mozambique:

At the end of the audit, those who failed to turn up stopped receiving their wages, he says.

The check, conducted over two years, investigated a total of 348,000 workers.

Earlier this year, the government outlined plans to try and control spending, especially the public payroll that absorbs 55% of tax revenue, according to the state agency AIM.