Delhi, India, has a serious ghost problem on its hands that has local leaders terrified. But the fright has nothing to do with spirits. Rather, the terror has to do with the realization that a local governing body, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), has been paying tens of thousands of phony employees.
It was only after MCD officials instituted a new biometric system of attendance that they discovered 22,853 “ghost” employees on the payroll who have been paid approximately 170 million rupees a month. Over the course of a year this payout would equal 2.04 billion rupees, or $43.8 million.
Delhi mayor Kanwar Sain said that the city government intends to find out who has been collecting the salaries of the phony employees and to take disciplinary action against any real employees involved.
-Noel Brinkerhoff