The government is waging a war against ghost workers and payment irregularities across all national and provincial departments.
The government’s effort to tighten payroll management systems and curb corruption was announced by finance minister Enoch Godongwana, who delivered the medium-term budget policy statement in parliament on Wednesday.
Godongwana said about 9,000 high-risk cases had been flagged for further verification.
“Using new data-driven approaches, government has launched a process to remove ghost workers from the payroll,” Godongwana said in his statement.
He said the National Treasury was working with the public service and administration department to identify ghost workers and payment irregularities across all departments.
Ghost workers are people who appear on the payroll but do not perform the duties associated with their positions.
They can also be people who have left the public service or have died.
Godongwana said the Treasury has also partnered with the home affairs department and the SA Revenue Service to analyse payroll, population, and tax data.
“The early retirement programme, which provides financial incentives for employees to exit the public service from October 2025, allows us to rejuvenate the public service,” he said.
According to the budget statement’s expenditure priorities document, initial results show 8,854 high-risk cases that require further verification.
These include cases involving payments from multiple departments, inactive employees, and bank account anomalies.
The expenditure priorities document further says a two-month verification process will begin in January 2026 and be followed by legal action where necessary.
The next phase of the project will introduce a single sign-on application for public servants and upgrades to the government payroll system to automate monitoring.
This move is aimed at preventing irregularities and improving spending efficiency.
Earlier this year, Sowetan reported that the Gauteng health department had frozen the salaries of 66 employees as part of efforts to rid the department of ghost workers.
At the time, the department said the employees whose salaries had been frozen remained unverified.
The Treasury said engagements were underway with the Eastern Cape treasury to implement ghost worker detection in the province’s health department.
“This multi-stakeholder approach aims to enhance the integrity, efficiency and accountability of public-service payroll systems,” the document reads.
The Education Labour Relations Council is also conducting a physical verification of teacher and pupil numbers across all provinces to address concerns about ghost teachers.
“This audit will complement the government-wide ghost worker audit being coordinated by the National Treasury. Savings derived from this and other measures will be used by provinces to address funding pressures in the sector,” said the document.
The government has also introduced incentivised early retirement and voluntary exit programmes for 2025/26 and 2026/27.
This was introduced as part of interventions to manage compensation spending.
According to the Treasury’s compensation and employment data document, these programmes are designed to alleviate pressure on departmental compensation budgets.
“An amount of R5.5bn was provisionally allocated during the 2025 MTEF [medium-term expenditure framework] period to support these initiatives, which provide a voluntary exit path for long-serving public servants, creating opportunities for savings and the strategic realignment of the public service,” it says.
Sowetan
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