BENUE State Governor, Samuel Ortom has stated that the autonomy been canvassed for local government areas in the country by their chief executives and other advocates is not in consonance with what operates in developed democracies.
Governor Ortom who spoke to media executives at his country home, Gbamjinba, headquarters of Guma local government area of the state at the weekend said, ‘am aware that local government in the country is advocating autonomy but even in Britain, local government is an appendage of the state.
The governor who decried the rots enmeshed in the third tier of government across the nation however said that what the third tier of government need now is total restructuring to be able to achieve growth and developments in the rural areas.
While using his local government ‘Guma’ and other council areas in his state as case study, the governor lamented that the rots in the third tier of government will not permit the desired objectives of meeting the yearning of the grass roots.
According to him, “in my council here, the highest staff needed is in the range of 250 workers but at the moment the council has over 1,500 workers on its pay roll.”
“I know of a local government here, where a traditional ruler in the council has fifteen wives all the wives and their children are workers of the local government, in some instances, unborn children are listed as staff of local government.”
“Go to any local government area during working days, you can hardly see people who are workers up to 10, but go there when they are receiving salary. The crowd always overwhelm the council. Every chairman who comes on board always gives employment to all his or her family members, friends and political associates without recourse to the lay down rules.
“Some of these people just hide under the pretence of working for government and receiving free salary to the detriment of government. They are busy doing their normal businesses somewhere far away or near the local government,” Ortom lamented.
“I know of many council workers who are staff of local government far away from state capital, but every day I see them in Makurdi, (capital city) you ask when do they go to work.”
The governor noted that the local government as a third tier of government is doing nothing except continuous arbitrary employment of workers who can be categorize as ghost, this, he explained has made it absolutely impossible for development to strive at the grassroots.
Speaking on the backlog of salary arrears owed workers in the state and local government areas, governor Ortom stated that ghost workers and salary padding were responsible for huge wage bill of the state.
He attributed the increasing wage bill of the state which stand at N7.8 billion monthly to the activities of syndicate and cartel, promising that his administration would soon clampdown and prosecute the cartel.
The governor noted that the report of the committee on the restructuring of the state civil service discovered salient issues attached to rots in the civil service, one of the rots, according to the governor was the N1.4 billion siphoned from the state coffer within a year.
According to him, the government is worried as to why the wage bill continue to rise instead of dropping in spite of deaths and retirements in the service.
He stated that measures have been put in place to address this issue, including biometric data capturing and salary verification exercise.
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