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The Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration today welcomed the new online, real-time employee verification portal developed by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) for National Treasury.
 
The committee believes this will strengthen government’s efforts to eliminate ghost workers and protect public funds. Last year, National Treasury informed the committee that it had launched a data-driven audit of ghost employees and payment irregularities across national and provincial departments, where salaries account for more than 60% of expenditure. Using the PERSAL payroll system as a base, Treasury was cross-checking data with SARS, Home Affairs and other institutions to identify ghost employees, duplicate IDs, multiple salaries and unauthorised allowances.
 
The DHA, in a statement released today, said that the platform will go live on 15 June 2026 and the verification process will run for an initial two-month period across national and provincial departments. The department also states that ghost workers and payroll fraud cost the national fiscus an estimated R3.9 billion in 2025.
 
The platform is linked to the population register and will use liveness tests and biometric real-time verification to confirm employee records. This will help improve the accuracy, reliability and integrity of government personnel information.
 
The Chairperson of the committee, Mr Jan de Villiers, said the development is a significant and welcome step in the fight against ghost workers and payroll fraud. He said the committee has repeatedly warned that ghost workers pose a serious threat to public trust in government. “This is exactly the type of practical, technology-driven intervention that the committee has been calling for. We have been vocal in stating that ghost workers are not simply an administrative irregularity. They represent theft from the public purse, undermine the credibility of the public service and rob South Africans of resources that should be used for service delivery,” said Mr de Villiers. “We commend the Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Leon Schreiber, for spearheading much-needed modernisation efforts and laying the foundation for building a digitally transformed state of which the benefits will be felt throughout the public service.”
 
The committee has also consistently raised concerns about government’s payroll and human resource management systems, which are still largely paper-based and fragmented and highlighted the need to modernise identity systems. The new verification system will help address the vulnerabilities of the manual system based on physical verification methods. The Chairperson said that the new platform will address these concerns and the committee’s calls for employee verification to move beyond the reliance on manual, physical methods.
 
“We have been clear that every person drawing a public salary must be verifiable. The public has a right to know that the names on the payroll correspond to people who exist, who work and who serve them. A biometric, real-time verification platform linked to the population register is therefore an important step towards closing the loopholes that have allowed ghost workers to remain on government payrolls,” Mr de Villiers said.
 
The Chairperson, however, stressed that where ghost workers are identified, consequences must follow. “South Africans suffer from ‘corruption fatigue’. The public is growing weary of hearing about fraud and corruption without seeing any consequences. They have the right to see concrete outcomes such as ghost employees removed from the system, perpetrators prosecuted and jailed and public money safeguarded for service delivery,” the Chairperson said.
 
He said the committee will closely monitor the implementation of the verification process and anticipates positive results. It will also request regular progress reports of the verification process. “We welcome this development as an important step towards cleaning up the public service payroll. It must become part of a permanent system of prevention, detection and accountability across the public service,” the Chairperson said.

Issued by the Parliamentary Communication Services on behalf of the chairperson of the portfolio committee on Public Services and Administration, Jan de Villiers