Dickson launchs operation clean Bayelsa payroll •To deploy free funds to infrastructure

Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State has launched the operation clean up state’s payroll, and called for the implementation of the civil service reforms on sanitising the payroll by the end of January.

He pointed that government abhored waste, as salaries paid to those that were not working amount to waste. “We don’t want to waste funds rather, we want to deploy it to build infrastructure for our people.”

This, the Governor said while speaking with journalists in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.

Dickson reiterated that the payroll must be cleaned to prevent fraudulent characters from receiving salaries from the state government.

He said that the younger generation of unemployed graduates in Bayelsa could only be given gainful employment if the issue of the endemic payroll fraud was dealt with in a decisive manner.

He stressed that Bayelsa under his leadership would not be known as a state that would be paying salaries to non-deserving people.

He said that the scarce resources of the state should be committed to the construction of more roads, bridges, schools, health facilities and others with direct impact on the citizenry.

Dickson averred that the recurrent burden on the state had become too high, and as such it had become necessary to clean up the mess and show many the way out.

He said, “By the end of January, implementation of the reforms must commence. We should take out all the people who are falsifying their documents, those involved in fraudulent practices. Bayelsa cannot be  for the payment of salaries to non-deserving individuals.

“I want to build more roads, more bridges; clean up the payroll, so that we can clean up the space for the employment of young graduates.  The young ones must the employed so that they can earn their living. I don’t think they would be like the ones who would be employed only to reside in Lagos and Abuja to receive salary alert without working.

“We want people who are productive, we should stop the sense of entitlement, the state payroll should be more than amnesty payroll and those who are employed must be trained and must be productive.

“We want to employ more young people in this state, we have to take out the dead woods, we have to get out waiting to receive salary alert without going to work, those without certificates, fraudulent characters must be shown the way out.

“If we don’t take urgent actions, this state will not be able to produce civil servants with the right ethos to compete with their counterparts in other states. We have to work hard to ensure that the state does not grind to a halt. We have to stop crooks from damaging our state.

To this end, the Governor said we are desirous to employ our fresh and young graduates, and to do this, not minding tribe, political leaning,  and otherwise, we would take out all these people who are falsifying documents, those involved in fraudulent practices, those without certificates.