Abia State Government has extended the verification excercise for public servants and pensioners in the State by two weeks to allow those yet to complete their registration to do so.
To that end, government has directed the affected individuals who are yet to participate or complete their verification excercise to utilize the grace period to get verified or be yanked off from the payroll of government.
The Commissioner for Information and Culture, Prince Okey Kanu alongside the Senior Special
Assistant to the Governor on Special Duties, Dr. Mrs. Betty Emeka Obasi
gave details on the issue while briefing news men in Government House , Umuahia on the outcome of this week’s State Executive Council meeting chaired by the State Governor, Dr. Alex Otti, OFR.
The Commissioner for Information and Culture , Prince Kanu noted that some workers did not turn up for the exercise, implored those in this category to use the next two weeks of the extension to complete their registration .
“The verification of workers happens to be one of the major plans of the reforms in the civil service and that excecise has almost ended but government in it’s determination to give human face to any of its activities to give some forms of extention, particularly to those who have not been able to take their chance and get verified to do so”
Contributing, the Senior Special
Assistant to the Governor on Special Duties, Dr. Mrs. Betty Emeka Obasi revealed that 62,479 public servants including pensioners have been verified while 11,479 individuals are yet to be verified. According to her, some did not turn up or did not complete the excercise.
She said, “we set up a verification committee. We picked people from the State Civil Service, the Local Government, the pensions board,the parastatals, organised Labour ;NLC, TUC, ICPC, just to make sure that what we are doing is credible ”
Dr. Obasi further explained that, “some started and could not complete because something was obviosly wrong with them being part of the system. So, what we have started to do is to put out that 11,479 people, those that could not complete and those that did not start the verification at all at their various MDAs and parastatal, their institutions, pensions board, their names will be there . And what it means, is if you’ve been yanked off the system, you could go back there, look through, if your name is there, you could see the reasons why you did not qualify to be those that were fully verified ”
The SSA to the Governor added that those affected should go to the desk office created at the Ministry of Finance premises for corrections or making cases. According to her, data of those who are verified have been sent to the heads of their establishments.