Governor Aminu Bello Masari of katsina State has accused senior government officials of frustrating the smooth implementation of his administration’s policies.
Masari stated this while addressing labour leaders and top government officials at the state secretariat in Katsina.
According to him, government officials had been sabotaging the implementation of ongoing reforms to sanitise the civil service and address challenges facing them in the state.
“The administration’s effort to fish out ghost workers at local government councils is being frustrated as names of the sacked workers are being inserted into salary vouchers”, he said.
Similarly, he added that government had observed that some top government officials were in the habit of adding names of fake pensioners to divert funds during the monthly payment of pensions.
Masari explained that during the recent verification exercise for pensioners, his administration was able to save about N700 million.
The governor, who attributed the low performance of civil servants in the state to lack of training, said in the last 15 years government had not sponsored seminars and conferences for civil servants.
He tasked labour leaders to join hands with his administration to sanitise the civil service, insisting that the state needed vibrant and God-fearing civil servants.
Masari also informed labour leaders of the difficulty faced by his administration to pay the salaries of local government workers, which he noted was as a result of the shortfall in revenue from the Federation account.
According to him, the state received about N3.6 billion monthly from the Federation.
Account for the 34 local government councils, but spent N3.78 billion on the payment of salaries.
“We source for N100 mil- lion every month to add to the money received from the Federation Account to pay salaries of local government workers”, he said.
