From LILIAN HOSEA, Abuja
The Bauchi State Government has set up a committee to verify workers without Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), it has so far discovered eight workers using one BVN to collect salaries.
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Adamu Gumba disclosed this in Bauchi. “We have discovered during our assignment that about eight or more workers on the payroll of the state government are using one BVN to collect salaries, We have further discovered that in some instances one worker is being employed and paid salaries by six or more agencies.
“We have also discovered in the course of the assignment that some state government employees are working for some federal government agencies in Abuja and collecting salaries from Bauchi State treasury. We also discovered in other instances that some BVN presented by workers during the authentication has been scanned therefore it means it is someone else BVN but the culprits posted their pictures and photocopied,” he added.
Gumba said that the committee had so far cleared 4, 654 civil servants out of the over 19,000 workers earlier said to be without BVN. He said that the committee had recommended to the state government to pay those authenticated their October alongside their November salaries.
According to him, 14, 623 more staff would be verified by the committee before the end of the week while 9, 889 pensioners that were found not to have the BVN would also be screened. Gumba revealed that the committee had set up six sub-committees and was deployed to the 20 Local Government Councils in the state to conduct similar exercise.
He emphasized that the exercise was not meant to witch hunt any worker or pensioner but to fish out ghost workers and fake pensioners. The chairman, therefore, apologized to genuine workers that were subjected to hardship due to the non-payment of their salaries during the exercise. He assured them that all civil servants cleared would be paid soon.
