Anambra State Local Government Service Commission has revealed that over 300 ghost workers have been drawing salaries from various local governments in the state without coming to work.
The chairman of the commission, Mr Vincent Ezeaka revealed this to Journalists on Friday during an interview in his office.
Ezeaka had recently come under attack from workers in the local government system who accused him of unduly victimizing them since his appointment.
Ezeaka, a legal practitioner was accused of working to impress his master, Governor Chukwuma Soludo, by trying to remove many people from the payroll, to ease the burden of the huge wage bill on the governor.
But, reacting to the accusations, he told DAILY POST that he was only doing his work, and that he would not be surprised if anyone accused him of working to impress Soludo, as the primary purpose of his appointment was to ensure that he did the work to the satisfaction of his master.
Speaking further, he explained, “The
governor gave us a mandate to clear the local government system of ghost workers, so we brought biometric attendance register and we used it for five months, then we made a printout of the first three months, and we got a printout with names of 320 workers in all the 21 local government who never attended work even one day in three months.
They have zero attendance and never clocked in or out in the system.
“We brought out their names and wrote to JAAC to put them off salary. In the civil service rule, you don’t even need one month of zero attendance to get dismissed, but we didn’t dismiss them, but we put them off the payroll.
“Some reacted and said the machine was not working perfectly, so we gave another chance.
The intention was not to reduce the wage bill, or victimize anyone, but for them to show that they are workers. To go to work and do the work they are paid for. Out of that 320, only 110 since February this year have been able to come out to prove themselves as workers and we have restored their pay and till today, 220 have not shown up.”
He said the Commission was still worried that the wage bill was high, compared to the number of people that were coming to work, so it did a physical audit of workers.
“We set up a committee to verify the workers. The heads of personnel management in all the local government brought in their workers list, they also attached their schedule of duty, and we went to JAAC and got the salary printout.