Ghost workers: Police officers among 9 govt officials arrested

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Criminal Investigations Directorate officers have arrested nine government officials from different MDAs over ghosts in the payroll, New Vision Online has learnt.

The August 11, 2025, development follows investigations ordered by President Yoweri Museveni to arrest and prosecute all government officials linked to ghost civil servants on the payroll a year ago.

Sources inside CID have told New Vision Online that the officials have been picked from the Police, Makerere University Business School and the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority to answer to the charges.

The officials are Tuesday, August 12, 2025, set to appear in court over the creation of ghosts on the payroll.

For years, the Government has been grappling with the challenge of ghosts on the payroll, resulting in the loss of billions of taxpayers’ money.

According to the public service ministry, over 6,000 unverified civil servants in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), as well as within local governments, were deleted from the payroll on July 15, 2024, and files for 1,000 staff were sent to the Inspector General of Government for investigation.

New Vision Online learnt that those being targeted in the new wave of investigations include accounting officers and human resource officers across different MDAs and chief administrative officers and their human resource officers.

Why the audit?

In the financial year 2023/24, significant shortfalls were experienced in the wage, pension and gratuity budgets.

However, Secretary to the Treasury Ramathan Ggoobi said in 2024 that the finance ministry has observed that most shortfalls are a result of poor planning and budgeting, indiscipline in payroll management and processing, as well as inaccurate records.

Ggoobi said the allocation to the salary and wage budget was guided by the findings of the audit, and, therefore, accounting officers are expected to accurately budget the funds across departments/units and payroll categories.

He said accounting officers should be personally responsible for proper payroll management and payment of salaries and wages for the vote in line with government policy.

Ggoobi also observed that some accounting officers irregularly recruited permanent and temporary workers outside the available wage bill.

He directed accounting officers not to recruit staff during this financial year except on a replacement basis or in case of incapacitation.

Also, recruitment was allowed where funds have been provided for recruitment of teachers and health workers under the Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers programme or after explicit clearance from both the finance and public service ministries.

Sh53b lost to ghosts every year

During the payroll audit by the Auditor General (AG), 7,778 public servants were declared fit to be deleted from the payroll for various reasons.

Of the above, 3,824 public officers were either transferred to other offices, absconded or died, but remained on the payroll. The validation exercise also established that the government has been paying over shillings 53 billion annually to ghost employees.

The office of the AG undertook a special audit of the salary payroll across all government employees in 367 entities comprising 162 departments, 179 local governments and 29 other government organisations. The affected include 1,982 civil servants suspected to be ghost workers since they did not show up for the validation exercise.

It was also established that a total of 1,972 government employees at MDAs and local governments were paid, yet they did not meet the verification requirements.

The payroll audit was conducted to establish the credibility of the Government payroll, confirm the number of public workers and estimate the payroll budget. It was also conducted to evaluate payroll management systems and make appropriate recommendations.

According to the findings, 338,966 public servants in MDAs and local governments were fully verified and recommended for retention on the payroll.

The payroll validation exercise covered 367 entities, including 162 MDAs, 176 local governments and 29 other government organisations for February 2023.

Of these, only 265 MDAs and local governments processed their payrolls through the public service ministry, while 102 MDAs utilised other payroll systems separate from the Integrated Personnel Payroll System/ Human Capital Management System manned by the public service ministry.