In light of the recent employee verification exercise undertaken on civil servants, Benue State Governor Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia claims his administration has saved N1.2 billion.
On Friday, at an Extraordinary Stakeholders Meeting of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state, the Governor made the announcement.
KURYALOADED readers may remember that on Thursday, the state administration disclosed that a total of roughly 2,500 “ghost workers” had been discovered in the state’s 23 LGAs.
The governor announced during Friday’s meeting that some fraudulent activities were found and removed from the state’s payroll after the first part of the verification exercise was completed successfully.
After the initial forensic investigation, we found and fired over two thousand phantom teachers and government employees. This resulted in a savings of N1.2 billion for the government, he said.
He said that the N1.6 billion that was being spent on “ghost schools” and “ghost workers” had been reduced by the government to a more manageable N800 million.
He also said that teachers whose pay had been withheld for two months because of the audit would now begin receiving pay reminders.