Katsina State Government has detected names of children and wives of some prominent persons on the payroll of local governments in the North-West state.
Governor Aminu Masari announced this while briefing newsmen on the ongoing verification of local government staff in Katsina on Monday.
“It is unfortunate that these people have been on the list collecting salaries for over 20 years. It is also disheartening to note that some people, who do not live in the state, are collecting salaries every month’’, he added.
Masari said before the commencement of the verification, government introduced signing of attendance register so as to detect ghost workers.
“We asked every worker to sign during the verification after which we compared the signature with the one on the attendance register.
“We discovered that some people are just collecting what they did not work for’’, he said.
According to the governor, the delay in the payment of May salaries for local governments’ staff is due to the verification.
Masari expressed hope that government could save about N500 million after the exercise every month.
He, therefore, called on the workers affected to be patient because the exercise was necessitated by the decrease in the federation account allocation to the state.
The governor said the state government needed additional N1.2 billion to settle 34 local government workers’ salaries for May.
He decried the high rate of redundant workers at the councils.
