About 17,000 federal civil servants, who have failed to comply with the verification exercise introduced by the Federal Government, have been delisted from the payroll.

The affected workers have been apprehensive, as anxiety grows among the rank and file, with their salaries withheld by the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

Speaking on the development, President of Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Tommy Okon, charged the agitated employees to be calm, promising that measures were in place to address the situation.

He berated the workers for ignoring government directives for five years, noting that the Head of Service of the Federation (HoSF), Dr. Yemi Esan, had extended the exercise by a week to enable affected employees, who were erroneously omitted from the IPPIS portal, to forward their documents for update, provided they had genuine cases.

His words: “We called your attention to what we heard or information at our disposal just a few days ago. We received information that over 17,000 workers in the core civil service did not carry out the online verification, which was done by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation.

“Quickly we swung into action to interface with the government through the HoSF and by that singular act, there was the need for us to talk to our members, and that informed the reasons, because we have seen a lot of apprehension from our members, receiving several phone calls, then we also looked at the timing, because of the social economic challenges.

“We went deep into the document, where we also realised that even in some government agencies, we realised that names of PAs, SAs and some ministers were included in the IPPIS portal, whereas those people were political office holders in their rights in various regimes.”

Further on the lifeline available to the affected workers, the ASCSN helmsman said a committee had been constituted in the office of the HOSF to handle related cases.

He called those with genuine complaints, who had done the online verification, to submit a scanned copy of their document to the provided email address.

Okon, however, said the one-week deadline given by the HoSF to fully comply with the directive was rather too short, pleading with the government to extend the grace owing to anticipated rigours. (The Guardian)

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