KARACHI: A verification exercise conducted in collaboration with Nadra has revealed the existence of thousands of “ghost employees” in Sindh government departments.

Disclosing this at a press conference here on Saturday, provincial Information Minister Shazia Marri said the government had so far lost over Rs10 billion on account of salary payment to these non-existent employees.

“The provincial government is determined to eliminate corruption and weed out these ghost employees, ” the minister asserted.

She said scrutiny of 401,388 employees carried out by Nadra showed that 327,578 of them had new CNICs (Computerised National Identity Cards) while 73,810 had old NICs.

She said Nadra had no record of 20,456 manual NICs, while 21,438 fake CNICs had been detected. Of these, 638 had been blocked.  The scrutiny revealed that 1,264 people held two government jobs.

Over 800,000 youths in Sindh turn 21 every year and a majority of them become eligible to join the workforce, but the “ghost employees rob them of this opportunity”.

Ms Marri said the scrutiny process was continuing, promising that action would be taken against law-breakers.

APP adds: She said 381 employees had died but their salaries were still being drawn. There was a discrepancy in the date of birth of 16,065 employees.