Alhaji Mohammed Baba, the Secretary to Bauchi State Government (SSG), on Wednesday, disclosed that the state system used for the payment of salaries had been compromised.
Baba made the disclosure while addressing newsmen in Bauchi, shortly after the State Executive Council (SEC)’s meeting .
He alleged that the state government has found lots of evidence that there are ghost workers and malpractices happening in the system.
“The purpose of this briefing is to tell you the progress the government is making in addressing the salary challenges in the state.
”The intention of the committee set up about four weeks ago is to have a payroll where the state is not shortchanged.
“Since we came, there has been the hue and cry that there are many ghost workers in the state payroll, the intention is to address that issue squarely.
”And from what we have started, we have seen that there is lots of evidence that there are ghost workers and so many malpractices.
“The early system for payment of salaries and wages in Bauchi state has been compromised,” He said.
According to him, there is a collusion between the beneficiaries and the staff to the extent that the software we are using has been opened to a lot of manipulations, therefore, we can not place any reliability on it.
The SSG further revealed that from some of the manipulations that was discovered by the committee recently set up on salary, 715 people had been flagged off and their salaries had been stopped for one reason or the other.
“We have their lists and the reason for stopping every salary has been clearly provided.
“What the government wants to do is to ask the commissioners in charge of the different ministries and whoever is in charge of an MDA to take their own list and go back to those people, sit and interview them.
“It’s fine if it is something that can be sorted out but if it can not be sorted out, then, that automatically is the kind of thing we are saying about ghost workers in the system.
” Definitely, we can not continue to pay people that don’t deserve to be paid,” Baba added.
Also speaking, Mr Abdulrasak Zaki, Bauchi state Commissioner for Local Governments and Chieftaincy Affairs, said it had been discovered that a lot of retired staff and personnel of local governments were still appearing on the payroll.
Zaki noted that the development is totally unacceptable saying that ”we are doing everything possible to see that we remove them out of the payroll.
Also Yakubu Kirfi, Bauchi state Commissioner for Justice, said the identity of individuals involved in salary fraud in the state would be revealed in three weeks after an on-going investigation by the police must have been concluded.
