By Sami Zaptia.
London, 24 October 2017:
The GNA Ministry of Finance and Administrative Control Authority (ACA) in Tripoli have revealed that LD 5 billion have been saved annually in the Libyan state budget on the disbursement of false duplicate salaries since March 2015.
The saving has been made through the identification and halting of more than 100,000 duplicate National ID numbers used to claim false salaries. Some individuals were discovered to be receiving payments from 2 to 8 different jobs at the same time.
There were also 1,732 fake underage salary claimants aged between 10-18 years old that were stopped. In 2016, more than 15,000 salaries for claimants who should have been in retirement were also stopped.
The report says that these savings have reduced the state salary section of the state budget from LD 24 bn to LD 19 bn. This saving will enable the state to employ new young graduates, the report added.
The report says that the about 2 million National ID numbers have now been inputted into the national database which is used to disburse state-sector salaries. About 1.5 million of these are administrative state employees and about 500,000 are bank, (state-owned) company, students receiving scholarships (domestic and abroad), social security and unemployment benefit claimants.
The report admits that while by law state-sector salaries are not supposed to be dispersed without Libyan citizens providing a valid National ID number, the project and database has only succeeded in registering 85 percent of state-sector salary payments.
The report says that its next third phase of the National ID number project is to register the remaining estimated 15 percent of state-sector salaried employees which it hopes will make some further savings in annual state budget disbursements.
