By Ndahi Marama

MAIDUGURI— Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State, yesterday, warned banks operating in the state to desist from conniving with civil servants to milk government through ghost workers.

Gov. Shetima

According to him, the ongoing verification of genuine workers has come to stay.

The governor, who spoke on the lingering crisis between government, labour and civil servants over workers salaries in the last two months, said he will only pay the 12,000 workers already verified and their bio-metric data captured, for the last two months, which stood at N2.3 billion, compared to the N2.7 billion previous monthly wage.

The state workforce was 25,000, but with the ongoing verification, only 19,000 workers were cleared, while over 5,000 were discovered fake, consuming almost a billion naira monthly.

The governor stressed that when the verification committee was done with its job, he was ready to pay genuine workers, pointing out that at the end of the exercise, government might recover about a billion naira consumed by ghost workers monthly.

He commended the leadership of Nigerian Labour Congress, Borno chapter, under the chairmanship of Mr. Titus Abana, for supporting government in its ongoing verification exercise and bio-metric data capturing.