It is a highly organised racket involving not only the employers but also employment agencies, HR personnel, accountants, auditors, banks and the provident fund organization among others. The practice is eating up, with impunity, thousands of crores of rupees of public funds spent annually by government, semi-government, local-self organisations, panchayats, etc. across the country year after year. The so-called administrative reform initiatives of the state and central governments have paid little attention to pay-roll reforms, job counts and head-counts on a real time basis using the latest accounting techniques.

The exact number of the ghost employees with MCD detected through the application of the biometric attendance system is 22,853. There could be many more bogus employees with MCD which may have escaped the scrutiny of the system. Although MCD has stopped payment of salaries and benefits to the bogus employees, the country's biggest municipality seems to be rather on the defensive about the corruption within the organisation as its public statement has so far revealed little about the exact sums drawn on account of the payment of salaries and benefits to these employees, who drew the money and how. It is also not clear if all of them were shown as permanent employees who are normally entitled to house rent, children's education allowance, medical reimbursement facility and leave travel concession among others.

Assuming that the average monthly salary alone of these employees is around Rs. 10,000, the annual false billing of salaries in respect of these non-existent employees would come to over Rs. 274 crore (Rs. 204 crore as per MCD's quick estimate). Over the last 10 years or more, the public funds embezzled through the process would amount to thousands of crores of rupees. The number of bogus employees represented nearly 20 per cent of the total MCD staff strength of 1,27,094. No one can say for certain how long these ghost employees stayed on the salary roster of MCD and how their number swelled over the years. A vigilance enquiry, ordered by the MCD following the detection of the corruption, is expected to reveal more details about the case in due course. The Delhi Mayor wants a CBI probe.

However, public response to the case has so far been absolutely lukewarm. Neither the government of Delhi nor the Union Government has expressed any serious concern about the matter. Maybe, they saw nothing unusual about it as the practice may be common in other municipalities and government organisations and departments such as PWD, community development, primary education and public health administration. Even the media, both electronic and print, seems to underplay such practices almost as non-event. Lack of administrative supervision and public scrutiny have helped the job racketeers and placement companies to make deep penetration into the easy-going government organisations with the help of dishonest public servants and politicians.

In many municipalities, even genuine full-time employees are available only for part-time work as they work elsewhere during office hours with the full knowledge and cooperation of their peers. Many such 'part-time' employees on full-time pay rolls leave their personal effects on the table, giving an impression to the visitors that they are around, before leaving their post for hours to do another job. For conservancy and maintenance staff, engaged in outdoor work, it is a lot easier to manipulate the system, of course in connivance with the dishonest officers and supervisors. The outdoor work provides an easy avenue for engagement of ghost employees.

Ironically, the creation of bogus jobs and ghost employment find their origin in the private corporate sector, including small-scale units, proprietorship and partnership firms, in order to manipulate annual accounts and understate profits to generate black income for promoters or the senior management. It is widely practised in private organisations, big or small. The erstwhile Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services Limited was reported to have some 20,000 ghost employees, representing almost 30 per cent of the official staff strength of the global IT company. IT industry sources, however, say that such deliberate inflation of staff strength is not uncommon in the IT and ITes sector. The tool is said to be used to impress clients and also to stay prepared for execution of fresh assignments contracted at short notice.

The enrolment of ghost employees is also common in construction companies, transportation, security and retailing businesses, agro-based industries and in activities involving seasonal employment in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. The engagement of ghost employees is acquiring menacing proportions in the private sector at the behest of greedy employers. Although bookkeepers and auditors may be in the knowledge of almost all such cases, they are invariably under the influence of the management to cooperate and sell their silence. Stricter provisions in the companies act, strengthening the teeth of official inspection agencies and award of exemplary punishments to dishonest and rogue employers and their accomplices could certainly help control the menace.

The practice of bogus employment is escalating, threatening to derail the government's administrative and financial reforms. This is distorting the national income, apart from becoming an easy source of black money generation. The issue deserves serious attention from all concerned, including social and political thinkers. Certainly, it is high time the government acted fast to identify and book the culprits and award them severe punishments, including seizure of assets and long-term jail sentences, to arrest the obnoxious practice across the country's job markets. (IPA Service)