By Oyibo Salihu
Lokoja
Staff of local government councils in Kogi state yesterday staged protest over exclusion from the cleared list of staff screening exercise conducted by the state government.
In Lokoja, many of the workers who went to check their names at the local government Secretariat were shocked when workers who had been taking salaries up to December, last year, found their names on uncleared list, while some could not find their names in both cleared and uncleared list.
Expressing disappointment over the screening, one of the staff, Mr. Usman Isah Nuhu, said he had spent over twenty years in the council, wondered the criteria used in screening him out of service.
He added that during the screening, he tendered his diploma certificate and he was screened without any problems, “but now they were saying that I did not present PGD and Master Degree certificates which I have never even applied for.”
He said: “Imagine people who do not know what civil service is all about were brought to screen workers. Look at the mess they have created now. People who have been taking salaries till last December cannot see their names now. How can they classify workers who have put in over twenty years in service as ghost workers.
“In the first list, released last year, over 180 workers of the council were screened out, but today’s list over 400 staffers of the local government is nowhere to be found. This exercise was in shamble and was not aimed at reforming the service as claimed by the government.”
Another staff of the council who spoke to newsmen at the Secretariat, Asmau Mohammed, said since Governor Bello took over the administration of the state, she had never taken “a dime as salary,” adding that her name was on cleared list, but no salary was paid to her.
She called on President Muhammadu Buhari to prevail on Governor Yahaya Bello to do the needful to avoid plunging the state into endless crises.
Meanwhile, all the tertiary institutions in the state yesterday began their five days warning strike to express their displeasure over what they described as intentional removal of their colleagues from service and non-payment of salaries, among others.
When Blueprint visited Kogi state Polytechnic, Lokoja , offices and lecture rooms were locked.
