– Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state has unraveled how civil servants falsify their age to perpetuate themselves in service
– The governor’s committee on verification of civil servants revealed civil servants who were supposed to have retired reduced their age and remain in service
– The governor directed their immediate removal from the service and hence recovered over N1.9billion from the fraudulent civil servants
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state has said that the sum of N1.9billion would be recovered from public servants who fraudulently falsified their records while in the service of the state government.
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa and his commissioner for information, Patrick Ukah during a media briefing in Asaba
The committee empowered by the state government to verify the dates of birth and employments of public officers in the state which had Mrs. Nkem Okwuofu as chairman on Wednesday decried falsification of documents and condemned attitude of those who aid and abet such actions in the state civil service.
“From the report before us, out of 1,113 people who were invited by the committee, only 376 officers were cleared, 291 are supposed to have retired which means they are receiving salaries they ought not to receive.
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“This set of people and those who failed to appear before the committee should be expunged immediately from the payroll”, the unhappy governor told the committee chairman who incidentally is chairman of the state civil service commission.
Governor Okowa, who bemoaned the connivance of staff of directorate of establishment and pensions in the falsification of records, directed the office of the head of service to carry out an investigation and ensure that those culpable were given appropriate disciplinary measures.
The governor said: “a lot of questions need answers from the directorate of establishment because, these anomalies should not arise if they did their work creditably; those involved in these anomalies should be brought to book.
Civil servants undergoing verification
“This is a wakeup call in the public service that a lot need to be done to sanitize the system because we also have had situations within the public service, especially in the local government system where people who are not entitled to promotion were promoted and those who are due are denied”.
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On the issue of some civil servants who can no longer carry out their functions due to ill health, Governor Okowa directed the office of the head of service to liaise with the state ministry of health to set up a medical board to handle such cases.
The governor insisted that: “the verification exercise is not a witch hunt but to ensure that salaries are justifiably earned and only those who worked for it are paid.”
While presenting the report, Okwuofu disclosed that out of 1, 113 number of persons invited for the verification exercise, 951 persons were screened, 376 persons cleared and 162 did not appear.
“The committee discovered that some staff on the payroll who ought to have retired but, for the falsification of records and others whose dates of birth were adjusted, were reversed to their verified dates and this has resulted in financial gains of N1, 976, 845, 123, 21”, Okwuofu, who was accompanied by other members of the committee, said.
360naze
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