The Senior Special Assistant to Abia State Governor on Special Duties, Mrs Betty Emeka Obasi, has disclosed that 11,479 persons comprising civil servants and pensioners are yet to be verified in the State’s civil service verification program.
The state government cautioned those yet to be verified that their names would be struck off from payment systems in the State.
Obasi gave the figure in Umuahia while briefing journalists on the outcome of this week’s Executive Council Meeting, presided over by Governor Alex Otti.
She said that 62,479 public servants, including pensioners, have so far been verified.
She added that some persons did not turn up for the exercise, while some other individuals participated but did not complete the verification process.
She said, “We set up a verification committee. We picked people from the State Civil Service, the Local Government, the pensions board,the parastatals, organized Labour ;NLC, TUC, ICPC, just to make sure that what we are doing is credible.
“What we have started to do is to put out that 11,479 people, those that could not complete and those that did not start the verification at all at their various MDAs and parastatals, their institutions, pensions board, their names will be there, and what it means, is if you’ve been yanked off the system, you could go back there, look through, if your name is there, you could see the reasons why you did not qualify to be those that were fully verified.”
Speaking earlier, the State’s Commissioner for Information and Culture, Okey Kanu, said that a two-week extension had been granted to the workers and pensioners in the State to complete their verification and every necessary registration.
He said those yet to be verified should utilize the two-week period to do so or have their names removed from the payment system.
He pointed out that verification of workers and reforms in the civil service system is part of the cardinal policy of Governor Alex Otti’s administration.
Also speaking, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Policies and Interventions, Rev Fr Christian Anokwuru, said that a N15 million community project would be executed in each of the autonomous communities of the State under the “Community Choose Your Project” initiative.
He stated that under the arrangements, communities would choose the projects that are most important to them, which the state government would execute.
According to the governor’s aid, the benefiting communities would pay only 5 per cent counterpart fees of the sum.
