Unemployment Relief Pro­gramme (URP) manager Feeroz Khan says the daily-paid component of the pro­gramme has been sus­pended and 8,000 “ghosts” removed from the payroll.

In a telephone interview with the Express yesterday, Khan said the scale of the problem was uncovered after a process of accounting showed that although 8,000 names were officially regis­tered to work, records revealed only about 20% of them ever actually turned up.

He further disclosed that 400 of the 1,100 monthly-­paid URP workers were terminated this week as part of the restructuring process.