No fewer than 50 out of 230 civil servants in the services of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) that were last week tagged "ghost workers" have reminded the chairman of the Civil Service Commission that they are yet to be paid their April salaries.
The civil servants, who work in different departments, including medical department were technically disengaged with their April salaries stopped without any formal explanation other than they were suspected to be ghost workers.
The following day after they discovered that their April salaries had been stopped, Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) and members of other associations affected by the strange "disengagement" embarked on warning strike action.
With the strike going on, the April salaries of many of those affected were paid while about 50 others could not be paid because of what was said to be technical hitches in payroll.
Chairman of the FCT Civil Service Commission, Chief Emeka Ezeh gave assurance last week that the salaries of the remaining civil servants would be paid before Friday last week.
However, the affected civil servants have expressed concern that as at today, Wednesday, May 14, there has been no information about the payment of their withheld salaries.
The civil servants, still made up of medical personnel, and others, appealed to the Civil Service Commission chairman to hasten the process of the payment to save them from financial inconveniences.
The Commission's chairman had last week formally apologized for withholding the April salaries of the affected 230 civil servants, including those in senior and managerial cadres. They were tagged ABSCONDMENT.
According to Chief Ezeh, the salaries were withheld due to a human error encountered during an effort to sanitise the payroll system.
He said that the measures were part of efforts to identify and eliminate ghost workers, but inadvertently led to the exclusion of legitimate personnel.
“We were trying to clean up the payroll and in the process, some genuine staff were mistakenly affected. I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience. The affected salaries will be released between now and Friday.”
