‘Audited!’ Oyo state govt discovers 41 ghost workers

A statement issued on Wednesday in Ibadan by Mr Taiwo Adisa, the Chief Press Secretary to Gov. Seyi Makinde, said the discovery was made by the consultants engaged to verify its workforce.

According to the statement, the Implementation Committee of the Oyo State 2019/2020 Civil/Public Servants Audit and Payroll Re-engineering/Validation Exercise confirmed the ghost workers.

The consultants also indicted 602 officers and recommended them for removal from the payrolls but the Implementation Committee affirmed 41 ghost workers.

“The consultants cleared 40 others of any infraction; uncovered 10 deaths, 170 systematic retirements and affirmed the option of voluntary retirement by 341 others, with irregular records of service.

The statement said that, “the Implementation Committee had examined the report submitted by the consultants and also interacted with the affected officers before finalizing the implementation model.

“Messrs Sally Tilbot Consulting was in 2019 engaged by the Oyo State Government to undertake employees and pensioners’ verification/validation and payroll re-engineering tagged “2019/2020 Staff Audit.

“Following a series of reconciliations, the report of the consultants was received by the government on April 30 after which an Implementation Committee was put in place to fashion out the final implementation model.

“The committee recommended that an administrative investigation be undertaken by the government to determine where the salaries of the “No Show” officers had been going, the report said.”

The statement added that of the 341, who opted for voluntary retirement, 290 officers had turned in their voluntary retirement letters.

The Implementation Committee, however, recommended that the government should accept the retirement of the 341 officers following the discovery of irregular records of service in their files.

The affected officers, the committee recommended, are to be helped to port into the pension payroll not later than two months after their respective notices of retirement.