Having overcovered at least 22, 556 ghost worker within its civil service after the recently concluded verification exercise, the Borno State Government said it has saved the state millions of naira.
Borno is the worst-hit by Boko Haram insurgency in the country which has killed over 40,000 people and left millions displaced, a development that has created laxity in the civil service and breach of its code of conduct.
According to the government, the ghost workers were uncovered in two reports by the salary verification committees for pretending to be teachers and local government workers or absconding from duties.
The government had also reported a similar trend in September, noting that it lost N1.8 billion to ghost workers in local government areas in the last 10 years.
In the new reports presented to Babagana Zulum, Governor of Borno State on Thursday, 14,762 ghost workers were discovered in local government pay systems, while 7,794 were fished out as fake teachers.
The committees on local government staff and primary school teachers verification chaired by Kaka Malam Yale and Dr Shettima Kullima respectively said N420 million was saved from the exercises.
“The amount came from about N183.6million recovered in bogus teachers salary while another N237 million was recovered from LGA staff,” the reports said.
The chairman of the verification committee on primary school teachers, Shettima Kullima said the total number of primary school teachers in the 27 local government areas was 26,450 before the verification.
He added that 24,250 teachers took part in the exercise while about 2,204 did not appear before the committee.
According to Kullima, the total gross salary of the teachers before the verification was N693 million and was then reduced to N509 million after 18,656 staff were cleared during the biometric data capture, thereby saving N183 million.
For Kaka Yale who chaired the committee for local government staff verification, by the end of the exercise, the number of staff dropped from 71,568 to 56,806; this followed a drop in salary from N1.1billion to N965 million being the new salary for the 27 local government areas.
Receiving the reports, Governor Zulum said the verification exercise along other measures were taken to make the local government a veritable tool for local transformation, adding that the primary school teachers verification was aimed at improving the standards of education.
Mr Zulum said:
“My administration will ensure the provision of teaching aids, the motivation of teachers through the provision of housing facilities, improve their welfare by rewarding hardworking and exceptional teachers.
“We will continue to provide education grants to orphans and the children of the less privileged in communities, while scholarship will be approved in due time for students within and outside the state.”
Comments