SaharaReporters earlier reported how civil servants in Abia State, Southeast Nigeria, locked out the state’s Accountant General, Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Njum Onyemenam, out of her office in Umuahia over the non-payment of their salaries.
The Abia State civil servants who picketed and blocked the state's Accountant General's office on Tuesday over their unpaid salaries have said that they blocked the AG's office to prove that they are not ghost workers as alleged.
SaharaReporters earlier reported how civil servants in Abia State, Southeast Nigeria, locked out the state’s Accountant General, Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Njum Onyemenam, out of her office in Umuahia over the non-payment of their salaries.
Sharing a video of the closure of gates, a witness told SaharaReporters that “all entrances leading to the Accountant-General’s office have been locked by the workers.”
About a month ago, it was reported that hundreds of civil servants in the state picketed the Accountant General’s office over the failure of Governor Alex Otti’s administration to pay their salaries.
The government claimed that they were ghost workers.
It was gathered that the state government had in a statement issued by its information commissioner, claimed that the government had discovered over 2,300 ghost workers in the government’s payroll and saved over N600 million by stopping the payment of their salaries.
The protesting workers who gathered at the state Ministry of Finance from different parts of the state described a ghost as someone who cannot be seen and doesn’t work but receives salaries. According to them, they have been going to work and cannot be tagged as ghost workers.
Speaking during the protest, one of the aggrieved workers who simply identified himself as George from the Ministry of Trade said that since April, they had not been receiving salaries from the state government and none of them knew why their salaries were not paid.
He said, "I know that Mr. Governor has given an order for them to pay salaries and I do not know why those at the helm of affairs at the finance level have not been able to release our salaries up till this time.
"Sometimes they will pay some and skip some and when you ask, they would say that the system dropped you. When we all know that the system is ‘garbage in, garbage out’, and whatever you ask a system to do is what it does.
"At this point, some of us are being owed for April, some May, June, July till this August. So, when we didn't receive our salaries, we all came to the AG's office and at the end of the day, she saw us and reversed to where she was coming from. She couldn't talk to us.
"Later, the Head of Service came and told us to go back and write our names, departments and ministries and hand them over to the gateman at the AG's office.
"We couldn't do it because we have been doing it for the past four months now. We have been writing our names on different sheets from here and there. These are things we have been doing and we have not seen any result.
"We have approached the permanent secretary of the ministry of finance, he said that his hands are tied, that he doesn't know what to do at this point, and that we should exercise patience, which is what we cannot continue to do again.
"We have been exercising patience for over four months without salaries, yet we have children and aged ones we are taking care of. We even heard that the one of children of one of us- twins - died because she didn't have money to take care of them.
"We are angry, not against the governor but against his agents that he is using to disburse the salaries. Let them pay our salaries because the governor is ready to pay salaries. Let them not continue to tag us ghost workers.
"A ghost is someone you cannot see, someone that cannot come to work but receives salaries. But we come to work and most of us come from as far as Aba and spend between N3,000 and N3,500 daily to get to work, yet we don't receive salaries at the end of the month whereas the governor has given an order for our salaries to be paid.
"If we have been disengaged from Abia State civil service, they should come out openly and tell us."
Some of the aggrieved workers said they were employed in November 2022. Some were employed in March 2012 while some said they were employed in May 1999.
Those who said they were not paid June salary alleged that they were informed that only workers whose names were on the December 2022 salary sheet would be paid.
They said that they had written several letters and lodged complaints but nothing had been done.
"The Acting Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance told us that there is a place they supply names from, and he indicted those in charge of biometrics which is in the office of the Head of Service. We went there but it was locked," one of the protesters said.