Abia uncovers 2,300 ‘ghost workers’

The government of Abia State claims to have found 2,300 ghost employees in its payroll system and purged them, which has resulted in a savings of over N220 million on the state’s monthly wage bill.

According to the state, the ghost workers were discovered as a result of ongoing verification efforts conducted on the state’s civil servants.

This information was provided by Deaconess Njum Onyemenam, the Accountant General of Abia State, on Monday in Umuahia, the capital of the state.

After having a meeting with the Governor of the state, Dr. Alex Otti, Onyemenam stated that the verification exercise was still in progress when he made his statement.

“From the ongoing verification of workers in the state, local governments, and pensioners, we have been able to save N220m so far.

“Not less than 2,300 ghost workers have been weeded out from the payroll, using the unified payment system and we hope to still identify more as we continue with the exercise,” the accountant general said.

She confirmed and reiterated the directive that the governor issued the previous week, which stated that workers would be paid the arrears of April salaries left behind by the administration before this one, as well as pensions to retirees for the month of June.

She also disclosed that local government employees who were unable to receive their salaries in June due to their failure to submit their verified payment schedule will receive their salaries this week. The reason for this was that they failed to submit their schedules in time.