Governor of Akwa Ibom State Umo Eno has expressed concern over widespread financial frauds rocking the state – owned Ibom Power Company (IPC) and the State’s Civil Service, vowing that he would not left any stone unturned in uncovering the alleged perpetrators making the state’s firms unviable and unprofitable.
The managing director (MD) of IPC, Engr. Meyen Etukudoh, was last week fired with immediate effect by the governor, in circumstances linked to alleged financial misappropriation and sabotage, thereby throwing the state into incessant blackouts.
Also, the governor was miffed about the endemic personnel frauds with the ghost – worker -syndrome pervading the state’s civil service led by the Head of the Civil Service (HoCS), Elder Effiong Essien, with millions of naira monthly allocated as salaries to unseen workers.
He, therefore, vowed to rid the service and the state – owned firms of such fraudulent practices for efficiency and income generation into government coffers.
“Since most workers may have travelled for greener pastures outside the country, it was illogical for me to continue paying such people, hence the decision for an immediate workers’ authentication,” the governor vowed.
He blamed the delay in the implementation of the new N80,000 minimum wage package on the problem, assuring that; “once the verification exercise is completed, we will pay the 80,000 naira we promised.”
On the recent sack of the Ibom Power Company MD, Engr. Etukudoh, the governor disclosed that, “I’m setting up a probe panel to investigate the activities of the power company, to ascertain why the power company is still running at a loss, and why the company is owing the gas supplier.”
He warned that “any investment of government that is not yielding profit, I’ll remove the MD, I don’t care the blackmail. We are determined, it is time that we must reap from our investments.
“We cannot keep investing and investing the people’s money in projects that are not yielding results, that is not how I was raised,” he stressed.
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