Indian Railways To Purge ‘Ghost Staff’  After After 1.5 Crore-Worth Fake Claims In Northern Zone

After an internal analysis exposed severe lapses in the maintenance of critical employee data such as date of joining and date of birth with the Integrated Payroll Accounting System (IPAS), the Indian Railways has begun an exercise to sanitise employee data, reports The Hindu.

The Ministry has reportedly asked all general managers of zonal railways and production units to sanitise employee data by reviewing the Management Information System (MIS) reports.

The move comes after detection of fraud in the Northern Railways Zone where ghost employees were reportedly created in a bid to claim Travelling Allowance, Overtime Allowance and Night Duty Allowance by manipulating the payrolls in the computerised system, causing misappropriation of funds to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore.

The ministry has also called for an urgent need to validate the employee master data that generates payroll and other establishment claims.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), responsible for the task of analysing the employee data had said the IPAS was not wholly sanitised.