ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
Bauchi state governor, Senator Bala Mohammed, has said that 100 doctors were among 1,279 ghost workers discovered from the payroll of the Bauchi state Ministry of Health.
He stated this in a speech during a Media Interactive Session/Parley with Stakeholders on the Challenges associated with Payment of Salaries in State and Local Governments and Issues Related to Norminal/Payroll as well as Pension Administration which held on Thursday, at the Command Guest House.
Bauchi Gov. (middle) his deputy, SSG and other dignitaries during the parley
He said the civil service in the State has suffered from systematic attrition bastardized by fraudulent practices and outright corruption saying that he is very sad that by act of Commission, collusion and distortion, Bauchi state wass facing a monumental task of sorting out what is clearly a corrupted salary regime.
“Ghost workers, civil servants falsifying allowances and other fraud in payrolls have frozen employment thereby creating a huge vacuum in the service delivery as well as generation gap in the State Service.
“In fact in Bauchi State, one can easily be a pensioner, get paid without ever working and can even earn arrears in payment. We have schools with several teachers captured on the payroll. When you pay a visit, you will see no teachers or at best three where twenty were employed.
“You visit a hospital with no Doctors and very few nurses, yet that facility has several Doctors, Nurses and Midwives reflected on the payroll. This is the story in nearly every Government establishment.
Stakeholders during the parley
“Presently, we have identified and removed 1,279 staff from the payroll of the State Ministry of Health, among them almost 100 Doctors collecting salaries when they are not physically on ground in this state,” he said.
The governor said that the Ministry of Education, has 6,000 staff reflected on the payroll while the Head of Service has a record of 5,000 staff which were sent four days ago to the Ministry.
He added that 111 staff whose salaries were stopped by the State Treasurer due to inconsistencies recorded between their nominal and payroll records.
Mohammed who could not hide his feelings said: “Let me be frank with you all, Bauchi is at the crossroads. We must decide to either take the bull by the horn or to allow the monster to take us down. In my view, we must deliver a knockout punch to the devil in the payroll.
“Even in our state of anger at this fraudulent way conducting government business, we must act in a scientific manner by developing technology to drive data in addressing the problem.”
He noted with concern that in 2015, the salary bill for Bauchi State combined was less than N4.5 Billion but currently, the wage bill in the state nears the N7 Billion mark despite the fact that there was no employment, “even though some Civil Servants have retired or passed on, we continue to experience exponential rise in our salary bill.”
The governor who said that all those involved in the sharp practices must be brought to book vowed that: “We must identify them, name them, prosecute them and if found guilty, jail them. We must recover the loot from them and their collaborators. Anything short of this will mean surrendering our future and generations yet unborn.
“Posterity will not forgive us if we just sit back and fold our arms. That is why this Media Parley is apolitical.”
He explained that the parley was not to malign any person or group of persons neither was it meant to ridicule or blackmail anyone.
“It is not a with-hunt either. Rather we must as a responsible Government provide a platform of consensus building on how to protect our commonwealth from a corrupt and decadent cartel that seems determined to enjoy illegal salaries while our workers and citizens sink deeper into abject poverty,” he stated.
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