Bayelsa State government is losing an average of N3.524bn annually to ghost workers on its payroll. This development, according to the Director-General, Due Process and e-Governance Bureau, Von Kenedi, necessitated the introduction of biometric exercise to authenticate the actual number of workers in the state’s civil service.

Briefing the newsmen on Tuesday, he said the exercise had yielded positive results, as over 11, 696 ghost workers were detected, adding that “only about 41,000 staff were successful out of 52,696 expected to attend the exercise.

The exercise, according to him, was not only to detect ghost workers in the service, but also to build up a data base for the entire staff, using the Human Resource Oracle system to computerise the civil service.

“The most important reason we carried out the exercise was to build up a good record system for the civil service to enhance information retrieval mechanism. For instance, in the Ministry of Education, it would be easier to know the number of English teachers available in Ekeremor, for instance, with a punch of a button on the system,” Kemedi said.

Mr Kemedi, who stated that the government was losing about N293.7 million monthly and about N3.524 billion yearly as salaries to ghost workers, said a system had been  put in place with the office of the Head of Service about the staff affected in the exercise, who had genuine complaints on their status, saying that human errors might not be ruled out in the final report.

Also commenting on the exercise, the Secretary to the State Government, Mr Gideon Ekeuwei, said the  exercise was to streamline the service for improved productivity and stressed that all those involved in the employment racketeering would be prosecuted.

“Things must be put in proper perspectives. If our civil service is helpless, the government will have no direction. A lot of things were taken for granted when the state was created, as the civil service was bastardised by certain individuals who were cheating the system. But it cannot continue and that is why we embarked on the biometric exercise,” Mr Ekeuwei said.