Kwara detects 8863 ghost workers on payroll

A committee that audited the workforce of Kwara State has said it detected 8,863 ghost workers and pensioners on the payrolls of both the state and local governments.
The Personnel Database Development committee, which presented its report to Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed at Government House, Ilorin on Monday, said the development could potentially save the
state and its 16 local governments N437 million monthly.
Making the presentation, the alternate chairman of the committee, Isiaka Gold, said the 8,863 personnel did not appear for a staff biometric verification exercise carried out by the committee.
Mr. Gold, who is also the secretary to the state government, said the state and local governments had 81,446 workers and pensioners on their payrolls, but that only 72,583 of them were cleared by the exercise.
Giving a further breakdown of the report, Mr. Gold said that of the 35,656 workers on the state government payroll, only 31,652 were verified, leaving 4,004 unverified personnel.
He said out of the 45,790 workers and pensioners on the payrolls of the 16 LGs in the state, only 40,931 were verified, with 4,859 unverified.
The committee recommended that the verification exercise should be continuous and that the state government should implement a harmonized staff identification system, certificate verification and clock-in system, which will be deployed by a consultant at no cost to the government.
In his response, Governor Ahmed endorsed all the findings of the committee and directed the State Ministry of Finance to adopt the committee’s report to prepare the payroll of both the local and state government workers henceforth.

The governor, however, said that the ministry should warehouse the projected savings until it was ascertained that all workers and pensioners were verified.
Governor Ahmed thanked the consultant and members of the committee for the quality work done and expressed confidence that with the submission of the report, there would be an effective payroll administration at both the local and state levels.