ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
Bauchi State governor, Senator Bala Mohammed, has lamented that despite the efforts of his administration to end the menace of ghost workers in the state civil service, people are devising new ways of defrauding the government and syphoning resources.
He spoke when he held a meeting with the local government Chairmen, their deputies and security agencies in the state at the Banquet Hall of the Government House, Bauchi on Thursday.
According to him, most of the ghost workers are in the local governments particularly in the Primary Health Care and in the teaching profession.
He said: “There are a lot of ghost workers, so you have to work with the committee that is trying to come out with a robust nominal roll and payroll so that all these impurities will be dealt with because they all come from some of the local governments especially in the areas of teachers, Primary Health Care where we pay a lot of money.
“For the teachers, the biometrics are not there, we are going to do biometrics that will recognize individuals very soon because we are tired of all these excuses and we must put the issue of salary behind us. This issues of salary, no salary and all that, it must be over in the next one month, because we are not keeping anybody’s salary.
“All that we are doing is to make sure that people are not punished unnecessarily while we are trying to fashion out the best system from our payroll and nominal roll but certainly, we cannot be open ended, we cannot continue forever. People are still developing ways and means to shortchange us and we have to work with you to make sure we do that.”
The governor said that previous governors used joint projects as avenues to shortchange the local governments of their resources declaring that this must not be allowed to continue.
“We will do joint projects, the thing is very bad the Accountant General will give you the picture of what was done before and then we are carrying the burden in the name of joint projects. They have really finished us, all the money has been spent and today, we are living on overdraft every month as local governments.
“We are the only state in the local government that is suffering like this and that does not mean we cannot free resources to do projects. We will put our heads together to do something so that your tenure will be something you’ll be proud of and you’ll leave legacies and landmarks,” he stated.
Mohammed while speaking on the security situation in the state said that the state is not there yet because there are a lot of security problems which are being created at the local government levels.
He assured that the government is trying its best adding that it will look at all the local government areas with one form of insecurity or the other.
He noted that: “Some of these challenges can be traced to some people that are well known in the local governments, sometimes, even the traditional institutions, some of them are community leaders.”
Speaking to the Council Chairmen and their deputies, he said: “So you are there to do whatever you can do to secure your local governments. You should know that you are the Chief Security Officers of your local governments, you should work with the federal agencies and you should be holding periodic briefings and giving them minimal financial support to be able to do this job.
“You cannot just be complacent and be telling people that you have not been given money, we have been giving you the little we are collecting and it is that little that you should take out a little and give them. I assure you that we will make more provisions for you to be able to do it.
“But I must tell you that it is not a bed of roses, we have a lot of problems and challenges and we are here for Bauchi renewal, we have to change the course of things, the dilapidation is too much, the destruction is too much because of despondency, complacency, fraud and inept administration. We cannot afford that.”
The governor charged them to know that they are in office to serve the people and not to serve themselves adding that as elected officials who have come on board after so many years of constitutional interactions where governors were just appointing Caretaker Chairmen, “you know a lot of expectations are on you and you are coming at a time when, unfortunately, I too came with a lot of challenges like COVID-19, dwindling revenues and high expectations vis-a-vis the dilapidation of infrastructural services.”
He further charged them that: “You must be able to eschew personal aggrandizement and joining issues that are not supposed to be, for the benefit of the state or the local governments.
“We have high expectations on you and we are looking forward to giving you your autonomy as much as possible so that you will be able to perform and to lessen the burden on the state government and ceed some of the responsibilities that were hitherto been taken to the local governments so that they will have time to address some more serious issues.
“We will try to free resources and work together with the local government councils and give you some autonomy to do your work as provided in the law so that whatever allocation you have from the federation will be given to you directly.
“But you must establish a very sound and accountable means of executing projects and programme
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