By Richard Adrama    
           
Over 300 ghost names have been unearthed from Arua district civil servants payroll, a recent validation exercise report has revealed.

The district chief administrative officer, Samuel Ogenwroth said the validation revealed that 78 names of teachers were discovered on the district payroll yet they are inexistent in any school in the district.

He said 57 names were found to be those of dead persons while 75 were of those reported to have absconded from their duty stations.

"These categories of people are presumed to have indirectly resigned from work since they are reported to have absenteed themselves from duty for over 30 consecutive days," Ogenwroth told the New Vision on Tuesday in his office.

 Asked about existence of names of the dead civil servants, Ogenwroth said his office was never informed about the deaths.

 "Considering the current method of remitting salaries through banks, people use ATM cards to access salaries of their deceased next of kin especially. In such cases we have no control especially when their relatives have the PIN codes," he said.

 Ogenwroth attributed rampant abscondment to high exodus rate of civil servants to South Sudan for greener pastures.

 Arua district pay roll has up to 3,800 civil servants. The validation exercise started early last month.