Over 17,000 federal civil servants are at risk of not getting their salaries paid as their records have allegedly been deleted from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
It is understood that the affected workers are said to be guilty of failing to comply with a verification exercise spanning over five years which was carried out by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF).
However, some of the affected workers argued that they complied with the verification exercise but were still affected by the delisting on IPPIS.
Reacting to the apprehension created by the development, the National President of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Tommy Etim Okon urged affected persons to remain calm as measures have already been taken to address the situation.
Okon said there were some discrepancies noticed in the IPPIS verification process, as names of Personal Assistants (PAs), Special Advisers (SAs) and, in some cases, Ministers who had served in successive governments were found in the portal.
He also knocked some of the affected civil servants who failed to comply with the verification exercise while it lasted.
According to him, the office of the Head of Service has graciously given one week for the affected civil servants with genuine claims to rectify their records. He urged such persons who were erroneously omitted from the portal to forward their documents to the appropriate email for action.
Those who had initially done the online verification on the portal of the IPPIS are to submit a scanned copy of their document to the email that has been provided.
He said, “We called your attention to what we heard or information at our disposal just a few days ago, we received information that over 17,000 workers in the core civil service did not carry out the online verification which was done by the office of the Head of Service of the Federation.
“Quickly, we swung into action to interface with the government through the HoSF and by that singular act, there was need for us to talk to our members and that informed the reasons, because we have seen a lot of apprehensions from our members, receiving several phone calls, then we also looked at the timing because of the social economic challenges.
“We went deep into the document where we also realised that even in some government agencies, we realised that names of PAs, SAs and some Ministers were included in the IPPIS portal, whereas those people were political office holders in their own rights in various regimes.”
While calling on those affected to quickly take advantage of the window period, Okon also appealed to the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation to extend the time frame so that those with genuine complaints can take necessary action.
His words: “You know it is always said that when you want to kill a dog, you give it a bad name, that maybe justifies the inclusion of SAs, PAs to the bad name in quotes. They came up with claims that civil servants don’t come to work, they just sit down at home and collect salaries, we said capital No to that.
“This information is very important to our members and we are calling all our members to remain calm because the HoSF is doing her best to see that those workers who were genuinely captured and verified with evidence of clearance will be brought back to the payroll.”
