12 November 2009
It's finally been done! Government has now completed the decentralisation of the Payroll Management and Establishment Control (PMEC) system to all provincial centres to address problems associated with weaknesses in internal controls which had in the past resulted in high expenditures on personnel emoluments and discrepancies between the establishment register and the legacy database.
It is a well known fact that Government had for many years been experiencing problems in managing its wage bill as the absence of timely, accurate and comprehensive information on both payroll and establishment had also resulted in budget overruns and frauds.
To manage and control the payroll and establishment for the civil service, the Public Service Management Division (PSMD) which is responsible for the wage bill through one of its departments, the PMEC Support Services Department (PSSD), needed a system that would assist to efficiently and effectively run at agreed and approved levels.
In view of this, Government sought support from its cooperating partners and received a grant of US$10 million from the Department For International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom to implement the PMEC project from 2001 to 2005 to rationalise the administration of the payroll and establishment. The PMEC system is a computerised/automated arrangement for managing the establishment and payroll. The arrangement is being implemented at Government's own initiative.
The PMEC system was therefore, specifically designed to deal with some of the problems that Government had been facing regarding the payroll and establishment management. Some of the challenges faced included payment of salaries to "ghost workers", poor record keeping and insufficient information for planning and budgeting.
At the start of implementation, the PMEC system was centralised requiring officers from all over the country to travel to Lusaka to enter their data on to the payroll. A need to decentralise the system was thus recognised but this had to wait until all the post implementation issues were resolved and an appropriate technology to deploy in the decentralisation programme had been identified.
The PMEC system which was officially launched on October 30, in Mansa, by the Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr Joshua Kanganja started with the opening of the Kasama office in July last year as a pilot scheme to determine the appropriate connectivity options to be used in the devolution programme for the rest of the provincial centres.
By the end of 2008, four provincial centres, namely Kasama, Kabwe, Mongu and Livingstone had been connected to the PMEC system in Lusaka and officers are now able to enter data into the system from the regional offices. Four additional PMEC offices have been launched this year in Chipata, Solwezi, Ndola and the latest being Mansa.
Speaking when he launched the PMEC system in Mansa, Dr Kanganja said the rolling out of the scheme in provinces means that the accountability and ownership of the payroll has now shifted from Lusaka to provincial offices. Consequently, all the provincial permanent secretaries and line managers are accountable for the efficient operations of PMEC.
Dr Kanganja said for the PMEC system to work effectively, there was need for permanent secretaries and responsible officers to understand the scheme well and be totally committed to its successful use.
Dr Kanganja noted that the system cannot work efficiently and successfully if responsible officers and end-users are not conversant with the terms and conditions of service for the public service and other human resource policies and guidelines as well as administrative circulars issued from time to time by the PSMD and Cabinet Office.
The secretary to the Cabinet said that the advantage of bringing the PMEC office to your door step was that it would improve on efficiency and minimise unnecessary delays in the administration of human resource payroll related issues.
In additition, decentralisation will reduce the cost of payroll management for Government as there will be no requirement to travel to Lusaka for payroll inputs. Decentralisation will also empower provincial offices to take full control of management of the payroll system.
While it is appreciated that the Government requires staff in the delivery of services, the main thrust of the PMEC system is to ensure that recruitment and placement of staff is in approved, funded and vacant posts and that the payroll is driven by the establishment.
Government is using the PMEC system to establish sustainable processes and systems that will support effective monitoring of public service employment policy, prevent budget over-runs in personal emoluments, improve the accuracy of the establishment and help detect and eliminate payroll abuse.
The PMEC system integrates the processing and management of the payroll and establishment control and further incorporates the terms and conditions of service and uses them to validate payments, thus eliminating possible fraud due to human intervention. The system is basically a human resource module that consists of a total of 258 payroll areas representing various Government institutions. The integrated system hosts approximately 140,000 public service employees on its database.
And PSMD Permanent Secretary, George Kawatu said the PMEC system will assist greatly in the management of human resource and the public service wage bill if it is properly managed.
He said: "The system enables one to establish how many positions are available in the province, how many of those positions are occupied and how much it costs to maintain those posts. It will therefore, assist in eliminating ghost workers and illegal allowances."
Giving a brief background prior to the PMEC system going live, director of human resources and administration in the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Development, Mr Lubasi Sakwiba said a number of activities were undertaken to ensure that the new system met the objectives for which it was being acquired. The activities undertaken included training staff responsible for managing the business side of new system and end users.
More than 500 end users have been trained and more than 300 managers sensitised on the system from various ministries, institutions and provinces. End-users are responsible for managing the payroll and establishment on behalf of their ministries, institutions and provinces.
Mr Sakwiba who until his transfer recently to the mines ministry was at PSSD, said a number of sensitisation workshops were conducted for some key stakeholders such as permanent secretaries, heads of department accounting and auditing staff.
This helped reduce resistance to the new system and ensured that all stakeholders understood their roles in the implementation of the PMEC system.
The decentralisation of the PMEC system will enable the controlling officers in the provinces to take full ownership of the management of the payroll and ensure that administrative decisions are quickly reflected on the payroll and that only genuine employees are on the system. They will further ensure that all payments are in accordance with the terms and condition of service pertaining to respective employees.
With the opening of the offices in provincial centres and connected to Lusaka, the focus will now be on extending the functional capacity of these offices from data entry to full payroll processing.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Times of Zambia. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
