Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen has con­firmed that most of the back­log in pay­ments to work­ers un­der the Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces (NPUPS) has been cleared.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter has not con­firmed how many of the pro­gramme’s more than 1,600 work­ers have re­ceived their out­stand­ing wages.

The de­vel­op­ment fol­lows weeks of com­plaints from NPUPS work­ers about de­layed pay­ments, with some say­ing they had gone with­out wages for sev­er­al weeks.

Ameen told Guardian Me­dia that the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary has agreed to in­tro­duce a dig­i­tal sys­tem to man­age the pro­gramme’s pay­roll. She said the sys­tem should help pre­vent late pay­ments in the fu­ture.

De­spite the pay­ment prob­lems, Ameen said NPUPS work­ers con­tin­ue to be pro­duc­tive.

For Au­gust, she said work­ers are fo­cus­ing on schools, par­tic­u­lar­ly ear­ly child­hood cen­tres.

“I must say a heart­felt ap­pre­ci­a­tion for their ded­i­ca­tion,” Ameen said.

NPUPS re­placed the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

The pro­gramme is cur­rent­ly sched­uled to end on Sep­tem­ber 13, with its fu­ture ex­pect­ed to be de­ter­mined af­ter the na­tion­al bud­get.

Ameen has pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that she hopes NPUPS will con­tin­ue, al­though no fi­nal de­ci­sion has been an­nounced. The min­is­ter’s lat­est com­ments did not spec­i­fy when the dig­i­tal pay­roll sys­tem will be im­ple­ment­ed.