Cameroon-MINFI: The ESD-Soft application to automate the calculation of "reminders" in order to speed up their payment.

 

There are many civil servants and government employees who have been waiting for years for payment of pay reminders (commonly known as "recalls") owed by the State.  To reduce the delays in these payments, the Ministry of Finance has set up an application to automate these calculations. This is the ESD-Soft computer system.

Minfi staff responsible for producing statements of amounts due were trained for two days (from 28 to 29 July 2020) in the use of this application, the pilot phase of which has just been completed after 10 months of testing.

To date, the ESD-Soft application has been tested in the Litigation and Family Benefits Department and has already enabled the processing time for cases to be reduced from several weeks to a few hours.   

Cameroon Tribune recalls that in the past, at the Directorate of Personnel and Pensions (DDPP) of the Ministry of Finance, it was not easy for a civil servant or agent of the State to be paid his "Reminder".

There were many reasons for this, including the lack of control over production deadlines due to the multiplicity of actors as well as the cumbersome and slow administrative procedures; the obligation for the beneficiary to provide certain documents such as proof of previous payments; the impossibility of tracing deductions, which undermined budgetary sincerity and caused a loss of income for the pension system, not to mention calculation errors, etc. The DDPP has also been responsible for the payment of the "Reminder", which was not easy to obtain for a civil servant or government employee.

"For example, there have been cases where a staff member has retired without having received all the monetary benefits that he or she has received during his or her career. This even puts a strain on the payment of their pension, because they have to take the time to check everything, calculate their statements of amounts due and obtain the necessary visas to clear all these arrears," says CT Gislain Romaric Meleu, the head of the IT unit at the DDPP. 

With the ESD-Soft application, the Minfi believes that these hassles will be nothing but sad memories. 

Source: DigitalbusinessAfrica