Why we ‘re screening workers–Bello

Following the complaints that greeted the release of the report of the screening exercise embarked upon by the Kogi state government, the state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, on Wednesday, gave reasons why government decided to screen the workers.

He said the exercise was necessary to make the civil service more “effective, efficient and productive”.

Answering questions on a phone-in programme tagged Bello at Your Service (BAYS), in Lokoja, the state capital; the governor said the exercise was not designed to punish any worker.

According to him, the screening became compulsory in order to protect genuine workers that were being affected by the activities of those that were not supposed to be on the payroll of government.

He said, “We are committed to the screening and we will bring it to a logical conclusion. We are doing this in the interest of the genuine workers in the state so that they can earn their salary, entitlement and pensions as and when due.

“The system we met on ground has never assisted the state, we have an overloaded workforce on which billions of naira that should have been used for development is being spent.

“Our people should just be patient with us and cooperate with the appeal committee that has been liking into cases of people with genuine complaints because at the end of this screening we will want to have a clean payroll”.

On the time spent on the screening, which is spanning over 10 months, the governor said the appeal committee has only six weeks to work, adding that the screening would come to an end in six weeks.

He said the determination of government over the appeal made it to bring experience people from the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) to handle the appeal.

Bello added that part of the civil service reform of the state government was the commencement of the contributory pension scheme that would help the workers and governmentv