By PAMELA EBOH, Awka

Against the backdrop of sanitizing the system, Anambra State Local Government Service Commission, (ASLGSC), has unearth over 427 ghost workers on the payroll of government in state, as well as six forged certificates allegedly issued by Imo State University (IMSU).

The ghost workers who were said to be former workers in the local government system include, 59 staff of the Commission who had died long time ago, 40 others who had retired and are still on the payroll of the commission and 11 member of staff that relocated abroad.

Disclosing this in Awka on Friday, Chairman of the Commission, Vin Ezeaka, said that the discovery was made during a staff personnel audit launched to sanitize the local government system in the state.

He said: “A startling revelation of over 427 workers were discovered to have been on the local government payroll without being staff. Out of the 427 ghost workers uncovered, 59 were staff of the Commission who had died long time ago, 40 others had retired and are still on the payroll of the commission, while about 11 others are staff living abroad whose names were still on the payroll of government.

“Others were some staff members of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and Nwafor Orizu College of Education, Nsugbe.

“We discovered 59 deceased staff who are still receiving salaries, 40 retirees also receiving salaries and above all, we discovered 222 workers on the payroll who nobody could identify as workers in any of the 21 LGAs and we have many of them living abroad and still receiving salaries, so we wrote to the Joint Account, JAC to remove them from the payroll.

“Some of them have come to voluntarily retire but we refused because you can’t cheat government and want to retire.

“While assuring that they are going to go on with the investigation till the finish line, Ezeaka promised and those caught in the unholy act will face the full wrath of the law in accordance with civil service rules.”

He added: “Apart from this discovery, at the end of May 2024, something dramatic happened, we discovered a Certificate racketeering cartel within the local government system.

“We set up a committee which came up with report of people with suspicious certificates working in various local government areas of Anambra State and we then set up a screening committee that indicted so many of them.

“Those indicted were identified and we started investigating the certificates they presented to the committee and went as far as going to the universities whose certificates they brandished and out of the 20 persons who tendered Imo State University certificates, we screened 14 so far where we discovered that six out of the 14 were fake certificates.

“So we have dealt with that aspect also. It is our duty to sanitize the system in line with the mandate given to us by Governor Chukwuma Soludo so that the genuine workers who sacrifice their time and energy could get value for their service and not looters who do not contribute anything to the development of Anambra state.”

The Commission Chairman further explained that the ongoing local government and certificate verification exercise was not for any form of witch-hunt, but purely to sanitize the system.

According to him, even senior local government staff including Deputy Directors and Treasurers were also sacked for fake certificates.

Ezeaka further said that those working with forged certificates in the LGA system in the state have been given a grace period to come and voluntarily report themselves or be sacked when the amnesty elapses.

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