Guinea launches war on fictitious civil servants .
CONAKRY 1996-08-28
Guinea launched a drive on Wednesday to rid the civil service payroll of fictitious workers as part of new prime minister Sidia Toure 's campaign to cut government spending .
Deputy Minister for Finance Ousmane Kaba said teams of inspectors would check government offices in the capital and the provinces to root out civil servants who drew salaries but had left their jobs , were dead , or had never existed .
Some 50 million Guinean francs ( $ 50,000 ) has been pumped into the exercise to deter the inspectors from taking bribes .
Kaba told reporters the annual wage bill of 171 billion Guinean francs represented 50 percent of current state expenditure , " whereas the acceptable proportion in countries similar to ours is one third " .
Toure , who took office last month , has said he plans to cut public service spending by 30 percent by the end of the year as part of measures to revive the economy .
Guinea is rich in minerals and has a vast potential for hydroelectric power generation but it faces stiff competition from its West African neighbours for foreign investment .
President Lansana Conte appointed Toure , a former senior civil servant in Ivory Coast , last month to clean up the administration and reform the economy following February 's bloody army revolt .
( $ =1,000 Guinean francs )