Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia has expressed regrets over the delay in payment of salaries of teachers in primary and secondary schools, as well as the Local Government staff.
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 to sanitize 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, inflation of the wage bill, as some of the payroll infractions discovered from the audit.
The governor in a press statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Tersoo Kula assures that workers who were successfully screened will receive their salaries before the end of this week. He noted that the government is not only fishing out ghost workers and removing the padding associated with payroll fraud, but also putting in measures to ensure the systems are protected going forward.
