Monrovia, Liberia- February 10, 2021: The Government of Liberia has officially launched the commencement of a Nationwide Biometric Payroll Verification and Headcount exercise in Monrovia, in its quest to robustly surmount the lingering challenge of payroll fraud in the country.

The head of National Payroll Taskforce Del Francis Wreh has said that the Nationwide Biometric Payroll Verification exercise represents a significant effort aimed at identifying and addressing payroll fraud within spending entities of the Government.

Speaking Tuesday at the official launching ceremony held at a special press briefing of the Ministry of Information, Culture Affairs and Tourism, the Chairman of the National Payroll Cleanup Taskforce, Del-Francis Wreh, expressed confidence in the sophistication of the Taskforce to ably utilize technology, including biometric, to successfully clean the payroll of ghosts, double and multiple dippers.

“The consolidated and coordinated task force is sophisticated and will utilize technology including biometric to successfully clean the payroll of ghosts, double and multiple dippers”, he said.

According to Mr. Wreh, that the headcount exercise is in two phases, with Phase One covering about 56 spending entities of Government with about 25,000 employees that are concentrated in Monrovia and other parts of Montserrado County.

Phase Two, he said, will cover 47 spending entities involving 43,500 employees who are spread across the rest of the 14 counties. Mr. Wreh furthered that the second phase will focus mainly on teachers, health workers, security officers, and local government employees.

The Taskforce Chairman indicated that from their simulation, if the taskforce can reduce payroll fraud by just 2%, the Government of Liberia will save about US$5.8 million annually of the current US$292 million annual wage bill. It can be recalled that the annual wage bill experienced a significant reduction from US$327 million in 2019 to the current US$292 million through the national payroll harmonization exercise.

Meanwhile, the Co-chair of the Taskforce, Hon. Clarence Williams has reassured the general public of the taskforce’s preparedness to lead an effective headcount exercise with the ultimate goal of ending payroll fraud.

Hon. Williams, who is also the Acting Director General of the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), emphasized that payroll validation is one of the ten priority areas of the IAA. As such, the taskforce will leverage the entity’s experience in conducting previous payroll verifications to achieve the goal of the Government of Liberia.

The Taskforce is a coordinated interagency initiative comprising the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), Internal Audit Agency (IAA), Civil Service Agency (CSA) and National Identification Registry (NIR).