Benue govt uncovers salary padding, ghost workers in LGAs

Benue State Governor, Rev Fr Hyacinth Alia has said that 2,500 ghost workers have been discovered from the payroll of Local Government Areas in Benue State.

The governor further said that there were ghost schools, salary padding and other rots uncovered during staff audit of the 23 local government areas of the state.

This was contained in a press statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Kula Tersoo which was made available to newsmen in Makurdi on Thursday.

The governor who said that the staff audit was responsible for the delay in the payment of salaries of teachers in primary and secondary schools, as well as the Local Government staff across the state however promised that workers at the third tier of government will from this week begin to receive their salary.

“The governor says the decision for the delay in the payment of salaries of the above-mentioned workers was taken after the government discovered mindless padding of the wage bill, and other fraudulent manipulations on their payroll.

“He says the decision became necessary after the discovery, to enable the government sanitise and cleanse the payroll; to ascertain the true wage bill of the state and to know the genuine workers that are worth their wages.

“He reveals that the first phase of an extensive staff verification and payroll audit for all teachers and local government staff has just been concluded, and it has already uncovered over 2500 ghost workers that have already been removed from the payroll.

“He identifies ghost workers, ghost schools, double dipping, unlawful employment, salary padding, payment to dead or retired individuals, unlawful replacement, and inflation of the wage bill, as some of the payroll infractions discovered from the audit.

“He assures that workers who were successfully screened will receive their salaries before the end of this week, noting that government is not only fishing out ghosts workers and removing the padding associated with payroll fraud, but also putting in measures to ensure the systems are protected going forward,” the statement read in parts.