By Ummi Ismaeel,
Minna
Eighty civil servants across different cadres, ministries, boards and parastatals on Niger State government payroll have been dismissed over allegation of fraudulently defrauding the state of millions of Naira over the years.
Niger State Head of the Civil Service (HOS), Hajiya Salamatu Tani Abubakar, disclosed this while addressing journalists at government house after the week’s State Executive Council (SEC) meeting.
She also disclosed that the verification exercise to weed the state of ghost workers was still ongoing, adding that the feat was contained in the interim report by the Salary Management Committee set up by Governor Abubakar Sani Bello.
Hajiya Salamatu pointed out that the council was acting in accordance with the committee’s recommendations to sack the affected workers after most of them made confessional statements to have committed the fraud.
The list of the affected workers, according to the commissioner, had been sent to the state Civil Service Commission, who will prepare their sack letters, noting that the office of the Auditor General of the state is in charge of the exercise.
The ministries, departments and agencies affected for the meantime, included; Hospital Management Board, which has 45 as the highest number of staff, with questionable source of entry into the state civil service involved.
Others are Niger State Ministry of Justice, 22; Primary Health Care Development Agency, 3; Ministry of Health, 7; Ministry of Education, 1; while Niger State School of Midwifery Minna and that of Tunga Magajiya has 1 and 2, respectively.
She further revealed that the verification exercise was still ongoing and could not give exact amount of money recovered or the total number that would be affected but assured that there was no going back in ensuring that perpetuators of such crime in the service were fished out and punished.