Ebonyi state governor, David Umahi, has announced his decision not to pay security agencies on COVID -19 duty through their service chiefs.
This followed information that security personnel manning the border areas decided to be collecting bribe and allow people into the state because of government’s inability to pay their allowances.
But Umahi in a state wide broadcast decided to pay through a monitoring team that will be set up by his deputy, Kelechi Igwe.
He said all security agencies would still participate in securing the entrances to the state.
The governor also in the program announced the dissolution of the state internal security outfit “Neighborhoodwatch’’ by 1st June, but said a new set of the outfit will be reconstituted.
He said: “Effective from 1st of June, the neighborhood watch in Ebonyi state will stand dissolved. We have asked the local government chairmen to ensure that they are paid their salaries for May immediately.
“We are reconstituting the neighborhood watch and we will be giving authority to the traditional rulers of the various communities in all the local government and their village heads and Eze in council, the town union leadership to come together and recommend immediate redeployment of 100 trained neighborhood watch with salary of 30.000.00 per month. We have 50 borders and we are going to use this neighborhood watch to monitor the borders .
“So we have reduced the blocking of the border because the 6 to 4 adopted never worked. So the police will still have the 1st blocking, army will have the second blocking, the other security agencies will come together and have the third blocking, then neighborhood watch alone will block the fourth.
“We are making the security people five in the day and five in the night which means in every border. We shall have 15 security people at the border. And we shall no longer pay security people through their service chief.”
