Kwara State government has uncovered 8,863 ghost workers on the payroll of both the state and the 16 local government councils.
Secretary to the State Government, SSG, and the Alternate Chairman of the Personnel Data Base Development Committee, Alhaji Isiaka Gold, disclosed this while submitting the committee’s report to the state governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, at Government House, Ilorin, yesterday.
The SSG explained that the 8,863 personnel could not be verified in the just-concluded staff biometric verification, noting that the development could potentially save both the state and local governments N437,500,513.56 monthly.
Alhaji Gold said at the time of commencing the verification, the total number of staff on the payroll of both the state and local governments was 81,446, but noted that only 72,583 of the workers and pensioners scaled the verification process.
Analysis,
recommendation Giving a further breakdown of the report, the alternate chairman revealed that of the 35,656 workers on the state government payroll, only 31,652 were cleared and verified, leaving a total of 4,004 unverified personnel.
He said: “Out of the 45,790 workers and pensioners on the payroll of the 16 councils, only 40,931 were verified, which leaves 4,859 unverified.”
The committee recommended that the verification should be continuous and that the state government should implement a harmonised staff identification system, certificate verification and clock-in system, which would be deployed by the consultant at no cost to the government.
Governor Ahmed reacts
Responding, Governor Ahmed endorsed all the findings of the committee and also directed the Ministry of Finance to adopt the committee’s report to prepare the payroll of both the local and state government workers henceforth.
The governor, however, said the ministry should warehouse the projected savings until it was ascertained that all workers and pensioners were verified.
Governor Ahmed thanked the consultant and members of the committee for the quality work done and expressed confidence that with the submission of the report, there would be an effective payroll administration at the local and state levels.
Vanguard