Taraba Staff Verification Committee chairman confirms removal of 7000 ‘ghost’ workers from payrolls

By Yusuf Salihu Sansani, Jalingo

The Chairman of the Staff Verification Committee in Taraba State, Haruna Abubakar Abdulkadir has confirmed the removal of 7000 ghost workers from the payroll of the State Government.

Abdulkadir who disclosed this while speaking with Apex News Exclusive in Jalingo, the State capital said the names were removed from the payroll because they got into the list of the civil service through the back door.

Abdulkadir who is the Permanent Secretary, Office of the Secretary to the Government of Taraba State, explained that the verification was to identify actual civil servants that got official approval of the State Governor before having their names into the payroll.

“Regrettably, those affected do not have genuine appointment letters, some don’t even know where they are working while some of them entered the civil service fresh on Grade levels 14 -16 without requisite qualification and even Secondary School certificate holders were appointed on grade level 10 many of them are new staff,” the Chairman said.

According to him, the Governor only gives approvals for appointment into the civil Service to ministries, boards and parastatals but some of the MDA’s presented list of names of their staff far above the number of those approved by the Governor.

He said the Governor approved only 3000 replacement for the Ministries, Boards and Departments as requested by them due to deaths and retirements but they presented over 7000 names that are mostly affected in the Verification exercise and debunked the insinuation that the State Governor directly forwarded list of 3000 new workers to be included on the list of new workers in Taraba State to the Committee.

He pointed out that the Governor only approved 1000 new staff to the MDA’s based on their request.

“Any worker whose name is removed but feels has genuine complain should go back to his head of department in the office, obtain a written document confirming that he is genuine or new appointee with the approval of the Governor to be re-instated after cross dully checking,” he noted.