Rotimi Akeredolu, the governor of Ondo State, has commanded the firing of several civil officials for getting two salaries from the state.
On Wednesday, while taking in the Committee for Verification, Scrutinization, and Clean-up of the State Payroll’s report, Akeredolu issued the directive.
However, the number of affected employees was kept a secret.
The governor further ordered all state parastatals, ministries, and departments to halt all hiring efforts until the wage verification committee has completed its work.
“We have over-bloated workforce, and undoubtedly, I am sure there are many ghost workers. Those who are receiving double salaries, apart from recovering the money from them, I am directing the Head of Service to get them dismissed. They must serve as deterrent to others,” he said.
Earlier, the Chairman of the committee, Mr Victor Olajorin, explained that the first and major step taken by the committee was to contact the various services, including the Teaching Service Commission, Hospitals’ Management Board and Local Government Service Commission among others.
Olajorin stated, “Our beam light was initially focused on TESCOM and some of the infractions detected were about: officers/pensioners receiving both salary/pension, retired officers later reappointed and drawing salary/pension, officers whose salaries are hanging among others.”
“Details are contained in the Volume 1 report of the Committee. In the process, a sum of N304,859,812.51 was discovered as the aggregate loss to the State Government from the above infractions.
“So far, a sum of N192,873,592 has been discovered from HMB as the total loss to the State Government. Mr. Governor permits me to mention that the Committee has so far, identified the sum of N497,733,404 for infractions in TESCOM and HMB.”
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