The Ondo State Government said on Sunday that its monthly wage bill had reduced by N500m following the verification of the employees of the local government councils that was recently carried out.
The Commissioner for Information, Mr. Kayode Akinmade, who said this in a statement in Akure, added that the workers would receive their accumulated salaries for June and July this week.
“So far, in the course of the ongoing verification exercise in the councils, 10,000 ‘ghost’ workers have so far been detected and the initial monthly wage bill of N1.4bn dropped to N900m.”
The commissioner added that “before the commencement of the verification exercise, the staff strength of the local government councils in the state was 24,000, but the figure has so far reduced to 14,000.”
The statement read in part, “Before the staff audit of the local governments in the state started, the staff strength was 24,000 but it has so far dropped to 14,000. What that means is that some people in the system have been servicing corruption by collecting money on behalf of 10,000 non-existing workers.
“A lot of irregularities were detected in the handling of wages of the local government workers and it was the government’s determination to put an end to the worrisome trend that necessitated the exercise.
“Insinuation that the exercise was designed to witch-hunt some perceived enemies of the government was not correct.”
Akinmade added that state government was augmenting the local government allocations with about N600m every month to enable them to offset their wage bill.
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