Dons Eze
1.5M ENUGU LG WORKERS GROAN OVER WITHHELD SALARIES AFTER VERIFICATION EXERCISE
About 1.5 million workers from the 17 local government areas of Enugu State were not paid their October salary.
According to the report, the non-payment of salary was as a result of physical verification exercise carried out to discover ghost workers which was held between January and March 2024.
It was also gathered that the state government had wanted to withhold the workers salary but the NULGE and the Local Government Service commission prevailed on them.
The October salary was delayed for too long when the state government was vacillating on whether to continue paying as usual or to pay only those that did not have any problem during the digital biometric capturing.
Investigation showed that some workers who had undergone the verification and cleared were among those that did not receive their pay.
One out of the many workers said, “I don’t know why I was not paid. I am not alone though but I don’t know why I was not paid. When the verification exercise began, some of us did not see our name and were not captured but eventually we were captured and we have undergone another verification since, so I wonder why we were not paid,” an affected staff of the local government laments.
This could be the result of the bottled fear among council workers that state government had a gang plan to lay off workers or down side the staff strength so that only few staff will be paid the N80,000 Minimum Wage, which the state government said would take effect from October.
Corroborating the fear of workers’ sack, the Commissioner for Local Government Matters, Deacon Okey Ogbodo, said that on no account should any member of staff that failed the verification exercise be paid.
“Any staff that did not participate in the verification process is considered a ghost worker. Those who were not paid may have one or two problems that need to be rectified and they will be paid but others will not be paid.
“All those who were not verified cannot be paid. It is like that everywhere in the country,” Ogbodo said.
