BENUE State governor, Samuel Ortom, has inaugurated a 10-member salary verification committee, with a charge to come out with a realistic wage bill for the state.
While inaugurating the committee, headed by a retired permanent secretary, Mr Tertessr Ikyabo, Ortom said the biometric verification exercise conducted earlier was not satisfactory, as the bloated wage bill continued to remain.
In a press statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr Godwin Akor, the governor lamented increase in the wage bill, in spite of the last exercise, saying that “there cannot be ghost workers without syndicates backing them.”
The governor said even as some ghost workers were discovered in some of the local governments during the payment of salary arrears with bailout funds, the administration wanted to know the actual number of workers, so as to plan well for the people.
Governor Ortom said the state pays over N7 billion monthly and described the amount as outrageous.