Bauchi State government says it has removed over 7, 000 illegal workers and pensioners from payroll.
The State Deputy Governor Senator Baba Tela who is the Chairman of the high powered committee set up by governor Bala Mohammed to find a lasting solution to the challenges of salary payment in the state public service says his committee has blocked 763,792,664 million naira being paid to 7, 141 identified ghosts workers and pensioners spreading across both state and local government payrolls.
Baba Tela, Bauchi State Deputy Governor and Chairman of the Committee set up to fine-tune lasting solutions to the lingering problem of staggered salary payments in the state stated this while submitting the report of his Committee to Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed on Thursday.
The Baba Tela led Committee was inaugurated By Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed on March 23rd, 2021. The Committee was initially given four weeks to submit its report but it was added additional timeframe to meet up with its terms of reference.
Baba Tela said in the course of their assignment, about 865 personnel we’re spotted and deleted from the salary payroll of the state government costing the state 615,783,962 million naira monthly.
He added that 113 ghost workers were traced on the salary the payroll of the 20 local governments of the state pocketing 61,013,892 million naira every month.
Senator Baba Tela explained that 25,090,155 million naira paid to 46 illegal state pensioners was blocked adding that 61,904,654 million which goes to the pockets of 91 local government pensioners was stopped.
The Deputy Governor said that it took his Committee four months against the four weeks that was given to its because it assumed a “task force” like approach.
He said that the report which is in three volumes recommended that sustained effort must be made towards “qualitative analysis” of data the Consulting Firm hired uploaded into the nominal roll to maintain a clean and credible payroll.
The Committee further recommended the deployment of ICT supportive audit tools that will provide “executive dashboards” for the Governor and Chief Executive Officers of MDAs to ensure ghost workers free nominal and payrolls in the state.
