Abia State Government said it has salvaged the sum of N220 million in its monthly wage bill after weeding off 2,300 ghost workers from its workforce in its ongoing verification exercise of civil servants and other public workers in the state.
State Accountant General, Njum Onyemenam, who said this after meeting with Governor Alex Otti said the savings was made using a unified payment system.
She added that the verification exercise was still ongoing and that the government hopes to make more savings when the exercise is completed.
“So far, we have been able to save N220million from the ongoing verification of workers in the state, local governments and pensioners. Not less than 2,300 ghost names have been weeded out of the payrolls, using the unified payment system and we hope to still identify more as we continue with the exercise,” she said.
Onyemenam confirmed that following Otti’s directive, government had last week paid the arrears of April salaries left behind by the former administration and also June pensions to retirees.
The state Accountant General said local government staff who had been skipped when the June salaries were paid, due to their failure to submit their verified payment schedule, would receive their salaries this week.
