Anambra uncovers 850 Ghost workers

In a frantic bid to eliminate waste in government expenditure, Anambra State governor, Chief Willie Obiano said his administration has uncovered 850 ghost workers through which government funds were being filtered away.
Disclosing this at an interactive session with media practitioners in the state, Obiano said that the discovery was the result of part of the internal mechanism his administration had adopted to cope with the harsh economic condi- tion in the country occasioned by crash in oil prices.
Also the governor has said that his government would not go into doing any federal roads as the state was yet to be paid a huge sum of N34 billion owed it by the Federal government on federal roads done by the state.
While regretting that the reconstruction of the Enugu- Onitsha expressway, which has turned a nightmare to the people, was not captured in the 2016 Federal Government budget, Governor Obiano implored President Muhammad Government to reconsider work on the road to reduce the suffering of the people.

According to the Governor, 350 of the ghost workers were discovered recently, while 500 were discovered earlier, adding that the exercise would continue.

The Governor said however that despite the downturn in the economy, Anambra remains one of the four states in the country still paying regular salaries to workers and carrying out meaningful projects, attributing it to prudent management of resources.

He however admitted that the drastic drop of the state’s revenue from the Federation Account to about 27 percent was affecting the execution of projects, but insisted that he would not abandon any project inherited from his predecessor.

He said that though the state’s Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, had improved from N500 million per month where he met it to an average of N1.2 billion monthly, his administration was targeting N2.2 billion IGR monthly The expected improved IGR, he explained, would not lead to undue taxation of the people as experts have identified areas that could be exploited in the attempt to improve revenue generation.

Obiano said his administration would remain focused in the implementation of his programmes, maintaining that his four pillar development agenda, which include agriculture, trade and commerce, industrialization and oil and gas, as well as 13 ancillary enablers, would be executed religiously.