The 20 local government areas of Bauchi State saved over N1billion that goes to the pockets of ghost workers over the years.
At the moment, the LGs’ salary pegged at N2.9billion after it was trimmed from N3.2 billion.
Secretary to the Bauchi State government, Ibrahim Mohammed Kashim disclosed this to reporters in Bauchi at the end of a meeting with the organised labour in Bauchi.
He said when the Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed-led administration came on board in 2019, the state paid N3.5bn as workers’ salaries.
However, at the end of the verification exercise conducted to clean the nominal and salary pay rolls of the state civil servants, Kashim said Bauchi State Government paid N2.8bn to state civil servants at the end of every month.
He said the state owed no civil servant a month of salary, adding that sections of workers in the state complaining of not getting salaries are ghost workers fished out of the salary payrolls of the state and local governments.
The SSG said all workers with genuine salary complaints knew exactly where to channel their grievances.
He explained that the verification exercise took longer than ordinarily it should have because the present administration inherited a system that was bastardised for over 40 years.
Kashim explained that it was incomprehensible for anyone seeing how the wage of bill of Bauchi State kept rising up while workers continuously went on retirement while some died.
He said as part of the fruits of the verification exercise, all the 20 local governments of the state now pay their workers’ salaries themselves having got autonomy. “They owe no worker a salary.”