Governor Timipre Sylva said this on Monday at the Government House, Yenagoa, while receiving the report of a government staff audit, which will reportedly save his administration about N3.5bn.
The audit showed that the state government had 3,867 ghost workers on its payroll.
According to the report submitted by the Due Process and e-Governance Bureau, the staff verification conducted over a five-month period revealed that a total of 52,696 workers were expected to attend the exercise, but only 48,829 did cutting across over 100 ministries, parastatals, agencies and departments.
The biometric staff audit showed that only 38,892 staff were successful with a pointer that a total of 11,132 unidentified workers had long existed on the pay roll while some persons within the service had been drawing their salaries.
The incidence of civil servants drawing multiple salaries had bloated the payroll to an alarming proportion.
The report stated, “Our observations are that firstly, most of the ministries, departments, agencies, authorities, local government’s including the new rural development authorities are over-staffed.
“Also, we observed that the staff ratio distribution in the various units was not bringing results, where some units have more staff than the required hands.”
Specifically, the report urged the government to computerise its payroll system to avoid the loopholes that had been exploited by some civil servants.
In its recommendations, the report noted that deterrents had to be applied to protect public funds from future abuse.
According to the report, “We must ensure that the people who had caused the state to lose so much money be sanctioned. And lastly, it is very important that we put in place a decentralise system of salary payment. A situation where the treasury department prepares vouchers and pays salaries is subject to abuse.
“We will now expect the ministries and other agencies to pay up salaries of their workers.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Olamilekan Lartey
Quelle/Source: The Punch, 29.12.2009
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