On taking over the leadership mantle of Kogi State that will elapse in the next four years, Governor Yahaya Bello embarked on screening exercise to fish out ghost workers in the state.
The exercise has revealed that over 9,000 assumed worker in the state have identified themselves as ghost workers as they failed to appear for the just concluded staff screening exercise.
Henry Agbaje, chairman of the screening commission, disclosed this during a critical stakeholders meeting in Government House on Wednesday, saying apart from pensioners, a total of 9,720 persons across the state did not show up for the screening exercise. The figure reduced workforce even before the screening, he said.
Agbaje equally pointed out that in the course of the screening, over 81,000 staff and pensioners in both the local government areas and state were screened as a result of the governor’s determination to clean up the system and avail his administration with the actual number of staff in its payroll.
He explained that a total of 25,208 forms were issued across the 21 local government areas in the state, saying 22,272 presented themselves for the screening while 2,936 failed to appear, saying, “They were considered as immediate ghost workers in the state.”
However, he disclosed that out of the 25,662 primary school teachers issued the screening form 22,608 submitted themselves for the exercise and concluded that 3,054 teachers who did not show up are ghost workers.
Agbaje lamented that some workers has issues ranging from forged certificate, no statement of bank account lack of Bank Verification number (BVN), stressing that the committee equally noticed that some worked in another state but collect salaries either in the state or at the local government council of Kogi State.
Also in his findings, the Auditor General in charge of local government, Ahmed Ododo revealed that the interim findings of the back up committee was saddled with the responsibility of checkmating the activities of over 40 untreated forms that was included in the screened list.
Ododo also pointed out that the committee discovered that some anomalies in the activities revealed that there are elements who stood firm to sabotage the effort of the present administration to rid the state of ghost workers.
