The authorities in Delhi have just discovered that they have nearly 23,000 ghost workers on the rolls. According to a statement, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has 1,04,241 genuine employees. The payroll size is 1,27,094.

The ghosts — many of them may be the ubiquitous monkeys in Delhi — have caused some concern. But it should be noted that it’s a global phenomenon. Let the world not laugh at our ghosts; elsewhere, ghosts have been louder poltergeists. Take a look at some varieties of ghosts.

The teaching ghost, from mLive.com, the online version of Michigan Live: “Public schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb hinted in April that 250 ghost workers may be on the DPS (Detroit Public Schools) payroll. Bobb, appointed to oversee DPS, hinted at ghost workers back in April and earlier this month took the unusual step of forcing the district’s estimated 13,880 workers to pick up their checks in person.”

The pensioned ghost, from Nigerian newspaper ThisDay: “More than 24,000 ghost pensioners were discovered in the recent army pensioners audit by the (Nigerian) ministry of defence, its minister Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso has said. Kwankwaso said that the exercise would be extended to all departments. He said that the August salary and pensions would be paid to staff through a pay parade, and that whoever refuses to show up in person would be considered a ghost worker.”

The database ghost, from ZDNet: “Ghosts of millions of former workers populate the databases of corporations. The workers have moved on, but their ghosts linger, awaiting a hacker intent on using the ghost’s identity to damage the company's network systems.”

The family ghost, from AsiaOne Business: “Employers (in Singapore) who have difficulties recruiting workers turn to a variety of ways, including resorting to what the industry terms as ghost workers. To bump up the number of locals, errant employers typically collude with retirees, odd-job labourers, friends or family members. For every local worker employed, the construction sector can hire seven foreign workers; the marine sector, five; manufacturing, roughly two; and services and landscaping, one.”

The Palestinian ghost, from Russian TV channel RT: “Secret routes, fake IDs, risking freedom and even their lives — despite all this, illegal Palestinian workers flow to Israel in search of jobs they have no chance of finding at home. In 2009, there were between 35,000 and 40,000 illegal workers — ghost workers — according to the Palestinian Workers’ Union.”

The English ghost, from The Times London: “An army of ghost workers was created in a £5,00,000 scam by the boss of a company involved in a huge ministry of defence contract to upgrade a nuclear submarine facility.”

The American ghost, from the American-Statesman: “The Texas House official pushing to clear lawmakers’ payrolls of so-called ghost employees — those full-time, low-pay employees who are seldom seen at work — had at least one of his own. House administration committee chairman Tony Goolsby paid legislative aide Jennifer Shelley Rodriguez from December 1, 2003, until March 19, 2004, as a full-time employee earning $500 a month, according to personnel records made public on Wednesday.” Goolsby says he would now classify the staffer differently.

The Satyam ghost, from the Financial Express: “Just how many people does Satyam Computers employ? In June 2008, Satyam reported it had 51,643 employees on the rolls. The company’s website and government statements after founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju’s confessions put the number at 53,000. According to the public prosecutor arguing the matter in a Hyderabad metropolitan magistrate court, the number is 40,000. Analysts and accounting experts have been arguing that the company probably inflated the figure by at least 10,000, as it is a simpler way to siphon off money.”

If you haven’t had enough, there is another ghost on the way. This comes not from ghost worker but from ghost work. Originally, says Word Spy, the expression used to mean “work done by a ghost writer”. Then it metamorphosed to “work billed for but not performed”. The next incarnation was “work done overnight, on the graveyard shift”.

In today’s economic downturn, ghost work has changed yet again. Management consultant Hamilton Beazley redefined the term to mean: “After a round of layoffs or firings, the work that used to be done by former employees that must now be handled by the remaining staff.”

For the last ghost of the day, look at Lee Falk’s Phantom. In this collection, he may be the only Ghost who Works.

A GHOSTLY DISCUSSION

From a debate in the UK House of Commons on the Ghost Workers (Abolition) Bill Nicholas Ridley (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): I beg to move that leave be given to bring in a Bill to make it an offence both to pay, and to receive, wages paid out to workers in the newspaper industry who are retired or deceased, and for connected purposes. Members may not know what ghost workers are. I assure the House that they are not the millions of workers who are laid off by our current industrial disputes and who are currently on what might conveniently be called a no-day week, which is preferable, no doubt, to a three-day week. Ghost worker is not in any way meant to refer to the Prime Minister when he was sunning himself in Guadeloupe. Ghost workers are persons employed in the newspaper industry who do not exist. They have either retired or are dead, but mostly they are fictitious people with fictitious names whose only function in the industry is to receive a pay packet. They are given such names as Sir Max Aitken, “Dukey” Hussey, Sir Gordon Richards of Tattenham Corner and even, I believe, Mickey Mouse of Sunset Boulevard.

I think it is fair to say that the practice has arisen over the years because management has opted out of the control of labour in the newspaper industry, particularly in the printing of the Sunday newspapers. The unions have contracted to provide sufficient people for the printing on a Saturday evening. The number of people who are engaged in such work is not known to the management. That is determined by the fathers of the chapels, who apply for as many people’s wages as they feel like applying for on that occasion. The result is that management does not know how many people it employs.

At a recent investigation by the Inland Revenue into the printing of one Sunday newspaper, it was discovered that 55 people who were on the payroll were not actually present that night. In a recent television programme, the managing director of The Times, Duke Hussey, said that he went round the printing shop one night and counted the number of people at work, and it bore no resemblance to the number of pay packets which he saw made up at the end of the night’s work.

As a result of an investigation following a productivity deal, in one Sunday newspaper packets were made up to represent the bonus due to all the workers. At the end of the morning when the wages had been collected, 55 pay packets remained upon the table unclaimed. The funny thing about that was that 33 of them were for people bearing the name of Smith and 22 were for people bearing the name of Brown.

Source: Hansard; edited from UK Parliamentary proceedings, 16 January 1979