BY CHIDI NKWOPARA

OWERRI – No fewer than 1,789 of the 10,000 unemployed youths offered appointment by the Ikedi Ohakim’s administration have been branded “ghost workers”.

 Chairman of the verification committee set up by Governor Rochas Okorocha to probe the 10,000-job offer, Prince Charles Onuoha, disclosed this while presenting the report to Secretary to the State Government, SSG, Professor Anthony Anwuka, who stood in for the governor.

    He disclosed that only 8,211 of the 10,000 beneficiaries of the job offer physically presented themselves for verification, adding that those who did not appear for verification were ghost workers. 

According to Onuoha, “out of the 8,211 beneficiaries that appeared for verification, only 2,035 were genuinely employed.”

 He added that  some of the applicants who eventually got job placements scored less than 40 percent, while others never wrote examination.

 He sai: “There were also discrepancies in the certificates and documents and appointment letters presented by some candidates, as well as evidence of bribery, among other anomalies.”