Ghost Workers Must Be Flushed Out Of Cross Rivers State – Ben Ayade

Cross River State governor, Professor Ben Ayade has come out to urge the new Head of Service, Mrs Geraldine Akpet-Ekanem to flush out ghost workers from the system.

He recently revealed this while swearing in the new Head of Service, Mrs Geraldine Akpet-Ekanem at the Executive Council Chambers , Governor’s office Calabar.

According to him, he is happy with how the head of administration of the government and bureaucracy of Cross River State is being made substantive, and he hopes things will stay that way.

He added that he wants Mrs Ekanem to use her professional and educational background as a trained lawyer, and her self discipline from the heritage of a decent family, to check the level of manipulation in Cross River’s payroll system.

His words, “Today is a special day because the head of administration of the government and bureaucracy of Cross River State is being made substantive.”

“She is no other person but a very disciplined, highly professional lady, who from her citation has distinguished herself and has been an outstanding example of what a decent woman should be.”

”Today that figure stands at about N740 million per month. I do not understand that increment of over N400 million especially when you juxtapose it with the fact that I met a civil service wage bill of about N1.2 billion rising to N1.6 billion and now standing at about N2.1 billion.”

“It is expected that when pension is increasing, salary is supposed to be reducing.”

“But to have an increase in the wage bill in terms of salaries, increase in pension, while the employment regime just accounts for less than N 200 million is difficult to understand. It really calls for a thorough investigation.”

“So I implore you to use your professional and educational background as a trained lawyer, your-self discipline from the heritage of a decent family and check the level of manipulation of our payroll system.”

“As Head of Service, Ekanem has a very big challenge. Imprests are not being retired by ministries, simple imprests and it’s a hell of a task for them to retire it and qualify for the next month.”

“Personnel audit which is supposed to be a quarterly thing is not being done. What they rather do is every month, payment structure of November is transferred into December.”