The Civil Service Agency of Liberia has issued a warning to over 40, 000 public sector workers who were illegally placed on the government’s payroll to regularize their status or risk being deleted from the payroll.

“As the Civil Service Agency continues to scrutinize and clean up the payroll of government employees, the fate of 40,000 civil servants is said to be hanging in the balance. Their statuses are said not to have been regularized from 2019 to 2023, and the proper processing of the Personnel Action Notices (PAN) has not been adhered to,” the statement said.

According to the directive issued by the CSA’s Director General, Josiah F. Jockai, Jr., the CSA has requested all Heads of government Spending Entities to ensure that employees who were added to the payroll during the period of July 2019 to December 2023, “and whose status has not been regularized by the Civil Service Agency to work with their respective Human Resource Directors to proceed to the Civil Service Agency and have their Personnel Action Notices (PAN) properly processed within a grace period of ninety (90) days, beginning April 2 to June 30, 2024.”

The CSA strongly warns that “all Human Resource Directors of Spending Entities concerned are to take due note and provide the required documentation to prevent employees affected by this situation from being deleted from the GOL Payroll.

At the same time, the CSA Director-General, announced the lifting of the freeze on direct replacement.

“As you may recall, on 16th February 2024, the Civil Service Agency, under the direction of Mr. Alfred Drosaye, then Officer-in-Charge, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, placed a temporary freeze on select human resource operations. It said this measure was necessary to maintain order in how spending entities move staff around, especially when most entities were yet controlled by officers-in-charge,” CSA said.

He said the agency will not lift the entire freeze, noting that the government is lifting the freeze ONLY FOR DIRECT REPLACEMENT.

Meanwhile, the CSA noted that the freeze on new hires and transfers will be lifted after the Payroll Compliance Audit, which will be conducted shortly by the General Auditing Commission (GAC).

The CSA further reminds all heads of spending entities that in reference to Chapters 3 & 4 of the Standing Orders for the Civil Service, 2012, the human resource movements, such as intra- and inter-agency transfers, promotions and demotions, direct replacements and change of employee’s payroll account details.

“With the exception of the change of employee’s payroll account details, all human resource actions must duly be processed using the appropriate Personnel Action Notices (PAN) as required by Section 35 of the Civil Service Revised Human Resource Policy Manual of September 2014.