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Written By: Mohammed al-Kibsi
Article Date: May 3, 2008 - 2:31:38 AM
Hamoud al-Soufi, Minister of Civil Service
A large number state employees numbering 9,600 were fired by the Ministry of Civil Service for failing to give their automated fingerprints on time, said Minister of Civil Service Hamoud al-Soufi last Tuesday.
In a statement to Yemen satellite TV channel, al-Soufi said the decision was taken after the different ministries and state institutions affirmed those employees have over passed the legal period of absence and for not come to give their electronic fingerprints on time. The fired employees are believed to be either ghost employees or ones that had dual jobs and did not want to be discovered they had more than a job.
Also, in its session held last Tuesday, the cabinet ministers approved the decision of the Ministry of Civil Service to adopt the new DERMALOG MultiFinger Biometrics system for payments of all the state employees across the country starting from July 2008. The system will also be used for the employees daily signing in.
New devices of the multifingerprint biometric system have been installed in several state institutions in the past few weeks.
The electronic fingerprint and photo system was introduced by the Ministry of Civil Service as part of the administrative and financial reforms program to combat the phenomenon of dual and ghost jobs. More than 35,000 illegal dual jobs were canceled by the ministry of civil service since the implement of the new electronic fingerprint and photo system until now, said the general director of the electronic fingerprint and photo system Abdul Razaq al-Sharhi.
Each canceled job was either a dual job for the same person holding the same name but each job in different ministry or for the same person using different names for each job.
The new system discovered that a person that had 32 jobs in 32 different governmental institutions using faked identity cards. The Ministry of Civil Service canceled all the 32 jobs as a first step.
This person and other alike persons that were discovered having dual or multiple jobs were referred to the General Prosecution to be tried according to the law that prohibits such illegal acts.
Before applying the new system, the Ministry of Civil Service had announced to all the state’s employees that have more than a job to come to the Ministry, or to one of its branches in the different governorates of Yemen, to voluntarily chose one job and cancel the others. the Ministry warned the ones that would not announce their dual jobs would be fired from all their jobs and would not give them the chance to chose one job. This resulted in canceling thousands of dual jobs voluntarily, yet many remained illegal. The second phase was that the Ministry ordered all the state’s employees to fill forms including all data about their identity and qualification and other recruitment data to be loaded into the computers of the electronic fingerprint and photo project. These forms had to be ratified by the different institutions that the employees work for. The second step was that all employees in different governorates had to give their fingerprints and photos that were electronically scanned and loaded into the system.
Nearly 90 percent of the state employees have already registered in the general electronic registry with their electronic fingerprints and photos and the ruminant 10 percent are expected to be finalized within the coming months.
Mr. al-Sharhi said that the employment magnetic identity cards have been issued and distributed to the different governmental institutions across the country. The new magnetic identity cards were issued based on the stored and revised data of the employees including their fingerprints and photos. However, he said that the second step was that to coordinate with the banks and post offices to be linked to the system so that an employee has to put his fingerprint to special electronic machines to be provided in all banks and post offices every time the employee go to receive his/her salary. “This procedure aims at avoiding fraud by some employees that are believed to be absent of work but they came to give their fingerprints and photos so as their jobs would not be canceled but they left their works after that.”
To avoid such fraud the DERMALOG MultiFinger Biometrics system is decided to be used for payments at banks and post offices.
The person of interest is identified solely by comparing their automated fingerprints with those in a database. This process is safer and even quicker, since only the fingers need to be scanned.
It is believed that hundreds of employees are residents in the Gulf countries and have new jobs and, yet businesses are still receiving the salaries of their jobs in Yemen in coordination with some corrupt officials in different governmental institutions .
Some rumors alleged the new magnetic identity cards were of bad quality and could be damaged easily.
“This rumor is baseless and I believe the corrupted persons that lost their interests and could not receive salaries for dual illegal jobs any more were behind such rumors. The new security identification system is provided by German Company DERMALOG Identification system which had provided similar systems and smart cards for many countries including India, Malaysia, Mexico and Saudi Arabia,” said al-Sharhi.
He added that the company won the bid of the new system through an international bidding process among several international companies.
