Govt to use NID number to pay staff

NATIONAL Planning Minister Richard Maru says the Government is planning to use the National Identity (NID) card number to pay public servants starting next year.
The minister made this known in Port Moresby on Friday when announcing the appointment of Michael Kumung as the acting registrar-general of the PNG Civil and Identity Registry replacing Dickson Kiragi.
Maru said this was an important step to clean up ghost names on the Government payroll system.
“The public service consumes around one third of the national budget and that is around K4 billion,” he said.
“That is quite a lot of money going to the public service and we know there are some ghost names on the Government payroll system receiving payments. And as part of the Government reforms to cut down on unnecessary spending, we will use the NID card number to pay public servants starting next year.”
He said over the past five years K230 million had been spent on the NID project with the aim to register five million people and issue them with NID cards.
“However, only 146,567 NID cards have been printed and issued,” Maru said.
“There is a problem somewhere and I am embarking on cleaning this mess up, starting with change in the top management. I want the new registrar-general, Michael Kumung, with his team to fix the problem and we will allocate enough funding in the 2018 budget to get it rolled throughout the country and register all our citizens.”
Maru said public servants would have to have NID cards to be employees of the Government and get paid.
“We are planning to use the NID card number to pay public servants,” he said.
“I want the new team to go to departments at the national, sub-national and across all sector agencies of the state and register all public servants.”