GoL holds training for Comptrollers, HR, and Financial Analyst on payroll management

Monrovia, Liberia - The Government of Liberia through the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning in collaboration with the Joint Payroll Management Team of the Civil Service Agency on Thursday, January 14, 2021, held a one-day interactive workshop for Human Resource personnel, Comptrollers and personnel analysts on how to process payroll and follow the right procedure for appropriate adjustment.

The workshop brought together over two hundred fifty (250) participants including HRs, Comptrollers, financial and budget analysts, deputy and assistant ministers, and commissioners.

The Preparation and submission of payroll, its adjustments, including detailed information on retirement, replacements, new hiring, promotion; and also pay increment through top-up to lowest-earning employees, to the Joint Payroll team of the Civil Service Agency (CSA) and the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, were highlighted during the training.

Deputy Minister for Budget and Development Planning, Hon. Tanneh G. Brunson, speaking at the workshop, explained that the initiative started two years ago and is geared at securing additional fiscal space to enable the government to implement activities identified in the Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development.

According to her, others were placed in the wrong categories, based on their qualifications while others work multiple jobs in the same government, creating disparity and payroll paddling.

‘’ We also found that the wage bill was enormous and crowded within the fiscal space, so in order to understand numbers, we found it necessary to do a nose dive into compensation and related expenditure across government. This was a time-consuming exercise but a worthy one,” She added.

Many of us created space to accommodate friends, relatives by accommodating them through the allowance framework that existed or as consultants, to the point where even drivers were captured in that category,” Minister Brunson explained.

However, there is still more to be done to sustain the gains and to ensure a more comprehensive approach to managing the wage bill. We must include the recruitment and most likely validate all employees across Government, she added.
For his part, the Executive Director for Liberia Micro Economic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC) and head of the Payroll Management Team, Mr. Del-Francis Wreh said “today training is one of several training that will create an improve financial management system for human resource personnel and comptrollers across spending entities”.
He said the training is geared toward focusing on how comptrollers, human resource personnel, and financial analysts can process effective, efficient, and timely Payroll processing for result driving.

“Today process will drive the path of making the payroll effective and techniques in making sure that the payroll is equitable as well as having value for money” Wreh stated.

Also, the Director-General of the Civil Service Agencies, Hon. James Thompson said there has been lots of significant reform surrounding the Payroll system across spending entities. Along the line, we had been faced with some challenges in fixing and making things right.

“Each time we want to set up things, people will try to bypass us,” says Hon. Thompson
According to him, people are trying to help friends and others, by placing them into positions that do not reflect on the actual payroll. He pointed out since the start of the reformed huge numbers of government employees have been significantly reduced, on GoL Payroll.