No fewer than 20,000 ghost workers have been detected on the pay roll of the 25 Local Government Areas in Niger, the Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, Alhaji Garba Tagwai, has said.
Tagwai, who made the disclosure in Minna on Monday while briefing newsmen, said the ghost workers were discovered during the screening of the local government staff and teachers, which began last month.
He said that 7,000 did not attend screening, while others were underage children, retired workers, illegal replacement and unqualified teachers.
“We have a case of an account number that have seven names linked to the account for the payment salaries and no cogent explanation could be given for this criminal act.
“The preliminary report on the screening exercise shows that only 40,000 workers were cleared from the 60,000 workforce in the 25 councils, clearly showing that 20,000 could not be verified, what you call ghost workers,“ he said.
The Commissioner urged those with genuine claims, on why they missed the screening to approach the ministry before the end of this month or have their names deleted from the payroll and government record.
He said that screening would be a continuous exercise, urging people with information on anyone clear and should not be to assist the ministry “as we will continue to remove names from our record, if we have cogent reason to doing so.”
Tagwai said the ministry had directed that the salaries of council staff and primary school teachers for November and December be paid before Friday, Dec. 23, at the old rate, while arrears of the new wages would be paid in January 2012.
“We have a figure of 60,000 work force and a bill of N3.5 billion to pay the new wages. We decided to screen the workers to ascertain the actual workforce, which is about rounding up now.”
He urged the organised labour to pacify their members to accept the old rate, and assured that the new rate would be paid in January, with the arrears for November and December. (NAN)
?