'Century-old staff & teens rub shoulders in Kerala govt service'; CAG bares shortfalls in SPARK employee database
The report also exposed irregular processing of the salaries of employees who had retired/superannuated, or taken voluntary retirement.
The report also exposed irregular processing of the salaries of employees who had retired/superannuated, or taken voluntary retirement.
The report also exposed irregular processing of the salaries of employees who had retired/superannuated, or taken voluntary retirement.
Teens have found a way to enter Kerala government service even without attaining 18, and some employees have been government staff for over a century, going by the database of over 5 lakh government employees. The latest CAG report on the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) of Kerala has laid bare glaring deficiencies in the SPARK (Service and Payroll Administrative Repository of Kerala), which integrates the payroll and finance-related activities of the government employees.
One such finding is that there were 231 records where the difference between the date of birth and the date of joining was less than 18 years, implying that these employees had joined service before the age of 18.
For example, the date of birth of one employee is recorded as June 1, 2017, and her date of joining government service is June 2, 2017. The difference between the date of birth and joining is just 1 day. In 78 cases, the date of birth was the same as the date of joining the Government service. The most ludicrous inconsistency was detected in 12,801 records, where it was found that the date of birth or the date of joining was 1900.
The report also exposed irregular processing of the salaries of employees who had retired/superannuated, or taken voluntary retirement. The audit came across 228 cases in 30 departments where payrolls for processing salary were generated for employees even after they had retired from the government service. When this was cross-verified with the salary bills, it further revealed that salary was processed in four cases, resulting in an ineligible disbursal of ₹6.59 lakh.
The report revealed that the SPARK application does not have a feature to mark the end of service of an employee. As a result, salary was processed for these employees. In response, the government stated that the SPARK has provided an option for processing the salaries of employees who retired/ superannuated/ died while in service.
The CAG has recommended that the government should implement a functionality in SPARK to mark the end of service event in employee data and to process further payments to ex-employees only after this is specifically permitted by the DDO (Drawing and Disbursal Officer) in the system.
Audit analysis of the data also showed that out of 8,28,063 employee records, 2,72,076 (33 per cent) records contain junk value in the Permanent Account Number (PAN) field or do not contain the details of PAN. Audit also noticed duplicate PAN value in 6,374 records. The government replied that the department has not yet implemented online PAN updates and that this feature will be integrated in the next generation HR software, SPARK 2.0.
Audit also noticed that multiple Permanent Employee Numbers (PEN) are allotted for the same employee, even with the same PAN and Voter ID. The system allots PEN on registering the service book of the employee. According to the SPARK application, PEN will be the important code to identify the employee in the SPARK database. It will also record the details of loans, advances and other subscriptions.