Why salaries of Benue school teachers, LG workers is being delayed — Alia
By Titus Atondu, Makurdi
Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia has expressed regrets over the delay in payment of salaries of Primary and Secondary Schools teachers, as well as Local Government staff.
According to a press statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Tersoo Kula, made available to journalists on Thursday, the decision for the delay in the payment of salaries of the above mentioned workers was reached after the government discovered mindless padding of the wage bill, and other fraudulent manipulations on their payroll.
He further stated that the decision became necessary after the discovery, to enable the government sanitise and cleanse the payroll; to ascertain the true wage bill of the State and to know the genuine workers that are worth their wages.
He revealed that the first phase of an extensive staff verification and payroll audit for all teachers and local government staff has just been concluded, and it has already uncovered over 2,500 ghost workers that have already been removed from the payroll.
The Governor identified ghost workers, ghost schools, double dipping, unlawful employment, salary padding, payment to dead or retired individuals, unlawful replacement, inflation of the wage bill, as some of the payroll infractions discovered from the audit.
He assured that, workers who were successfully screened will receive their salaries before the end of the week, noting that government is not only fishing out ghosts workers and removing the padding associated with payroll fraud, but also putting in measures to ensure the systems are protected going forward.
