Obasanjo Photo: The Sun Publishing

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What appears a Herculean task in knowing the actual number of workers in the employ of Bayelsa State Government is gradually yielding good result with a biometric capture exercise initiated by the  Due Process and E-governance Bureau in the State.

It was gathered that the syndicate behind the ghost workers syndrome has been smashed.
Before now, all previous attempts to verify the actual number of civil servants had been frustrated prompting the state Commissioner for Information, Orientation and Strategy, Chief Asara A. Asara, to lament that no verification exercise would work in the state.

 But such pessimistic view is being eroded with the current efforts as 15 people have already been arrested while their sponsors have been placed on surveillance by the state government.
According to the director-general of the bureau, Mr. Von Kemeadi, the claims that Bayelsa State has a total workforce of 54, 330 with a wage bill of N2.6 billion is hard to believe, hence the verification exercise.

“The electronic biometric verification exercise is one small component of the oracle human resource management system. In Bayelsa we met a situation where there was a wide spread perception that there are ghost workers in the system and that it is continually being manipulated for the good of the few to the detriment of the people and government of Bayelsa State.

“Currently we have a wage bill of N2.6 billion which you would agree with me at some point may approximate to the financial in-flow of some states in this same country and this is not good enough.
“This exercise at the end of the day would be able to identify the actual number of staff in the employment Bayelsa State Government and the amount of money that is actually being paid and eliminate ghost workers and streamline the work force”.

On the big guns behind the ghost workers cartel, Kemeadi assured Bayelsans that security agencies are on their trail as they have been identified and are under surveillance.
“Talking about those at the pyramid of exploitation, we have been able to identify them already and seriously monitoring them and gathering investigation evidence against them. At the appropriate time they would be arrested. The people arrested so far are those I would call small fry, they are not the people we should be interested him”, he said.
Investigations by Daily Sun revealed that in a bid to cover their tracks, the cartel has been forging signatures to authenticate employment letters.

But the move has failed as the eagle eyes of the verification officers have seen through their methods.
In one of such cases, Lady Grace Timi Fiepere currently the Head of Administration in the state Ministry of Health has written a letter of complaint of to the Director of the State Security Service (SSS) over the forgery of her signature by some officials of the Post Primary School Board.

According to her, in 2003 she as the Secretary of the Board in the absence of the Permanent Secretary signed appointment letters which some officials of the Board capitalized on and forged her signature on letters they prepared for their clients.

 But as the bubble burst with the arrest of some people, the ghost workers syndicate devised another means by scanning her signature in business centres to further cover up their evil deeds.
 Part of her letter reads: “I suspect that they are scanning my signature to perfect the signing or to make a seal to perpetrate their act of putting the seal on the Letters of Appointment they have already issued without the seal and any other letter they will issue in the future
 “It came to my knowledge that up till 2008 and 2009, letters of Appointment are being issued with my signature but backdated to September 2006. And the innocent victims were told that I am to get part of their salary”

It was gathered that in the coming weeks after Governor Timipre Sylva would have received the report of the verification exercise, the big guns behind the ghost workers racket would be made public and made to face prosecution.