Governor Ben Ayade has disclosed that Cross River state has about 1840 cases in court and that the state was also struggling with an over-bloated wage bills in the face of dwindling federal allocation.
The governor who made this known, Tuesday, during the swearing in of Geraldine Ekanem as substantive Head of Service (HoS), said the new HoS has a task of finding a lasting solution to fraudulent practices in the civil service.
“The total allocation for the state last month put together was in the region of N900 million and it came at a time our wage bill is about N3.16 billion and many do not know what the state goes through to sustain salary payment.
“The fraud in the payroll system is huge. Today we have a major case of about N16 billion and as we are struggling to survive that, we have another of about 6.5 million dollars with ECOWAS. We have over 1840 court cases inherited that warrants the state hiring lawyers, we are paying just so much so I need a head of service who will provide me sufficient capacity.
“So, as HoS, one the greatest challenge you will have is to fish-out fugitive workers because I inherited a pension bill of N340 million per month but as at today, our pension stands at about N740 million and I don’t understand where the additional N400 million comes from.
“You can juxtapose it against the fact that I met a civil service salary structure of about N1.2 billion now it has risen to about N2.1 billion. It is expected that when pension is increasing, salaries should be reducing but to have an increase in salaries and pension when there is no commensurate recruitment from the government calls for investigation.
“So, I implore you to use your skill as a professional civil servant and a lawyer to check the level of manipulation in the state payroll system. I need you to put an end to the illegal recruitment and sneaking of names into the payroll system.
“I noticed that impress are not retired in the ministries, also, personnel audit which is supposed to be quarterly and fed to the Accountant General to complete salary for the month is not done. By 2022, most civil servants in the state will approach 35 years of service and due for retirement, you will have a duty for the massive recruitment of personnel.
“But bear in mind that as this people retire, they will retire into pension, so, as you recruit, bear in mind that you are recruiting them into the payroll, it will be double jeopardy if you have a huge wage bill with a corresponding pension,” the governor told the new HoS.
On her part, the new Head of Service thanked the governor for believing in her and pledged to give her best to the best of her abilities.
