A recent audit in Anambra State has uncovered a disturbing trend in the local government’s payroll system – 427 ghost workers are still on the books, drawing salaries despite no longer being active employees. The group comprises retirees, deceased persons, and employees who now reside abroad.
Vin Ezeaka, the chairman of the Local Government Civil Service Commission, revealed these findings at a press conference in Awka.
“We discovered 59 deceased staff who are still receiving salaries, 40 retirees also receiving salaries, and above all, we discovered 222 workers on the payroll who nobody could identify as workers in any of the 21 Council areas,” Ezeaka said.
“And we have many of them living abroad and still receiving salaries, so we wrote to the Joint Account, JAC to remove them from the payroll, he added.
Ezeaka detailed the extent of the issue, which spans across all 21 local government areas in Anambra, reflecting a deep-seated systemic problem.
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The investigation also extended to certificate fraud within the local government. A special committee was tasked to verify the credentials of employees and found several cases of fraudulent diplomas, with six confirmed cases involving fake certificates from Imo State University.
He further said:
“Some of them (the retirees) have come to voluntarily retire but we refused because you can’t cheat government and want to retire.
“We are going to finish our thorough investigation and those caught in this unholy act will face the full weight of the law in accordance with civil service rules.
“Apart from this discovery, at the end of May 2024, something dramatic happened, we descended on the Certificate racketeering cartel within the local government system.
“Those indicted were identified and we started investigating the certificates they presented to the committee and went as far as going to the universities whose certificates they brandished and out of the 20 persons who tendered Imo State University certificates, we screened 14 so far where we discovered that six out of the 14 were fake certificates.
“So we have dealt with that aspect also. It is our duty to sanitise the system in line with the mandate given to us by Governor Chukwuma Soludo so that the genuine workers who sacrifice their time and energy can get value for their service and not looters who do not contribute anything to the development of Anambra state.”
Ezeaka assured that the investigations were comprehensive and not meant as a witch-hunt, but as a necessary step to cleanse the system and stop the financial drain caused by these discrepancies.
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