Abia state government says it is not embarking on another verification exercise for its public and civil servants in the state as alleged by the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in the state.
The government says what is rather going on in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as the 17 Local Government Areas is the upload of workers’ credentials online.
The Commissioner for Information and Culture, Prince Okey Kanu disclosed this Monday while briefing the press after this week’s Executive Council meeting presided over by Governor Alex Otti, stating that the NLC had released a communique to the effect that workers should not be part of any verification exercise.
“Government is not embarking on any verification rather what is going on is that workers were asked to upload their credentials online. And like they say, there is always no smoke without fire; the government had planned to make certain appointments from within the civil service and when the files of some senior civil servants were brought forward, it was found out that there were no papers (necessary documents) in those files. There were questions regarding the credentials with which these civil servants were working with. On what basis were they employed? On what basis have they been promoted over the years? Questions and more questions.
“It got to the point that the state government decided on a -show- your -credentials exercise’ but just to make it easy for workers so that nobody congregates together to do all that, the government directed that the upload of the credentials be carried out online.
ALSO READ: Virtually impaired persons asks Ondo govt to employ members as teacher
” So, that’s not a verification exercise but suffice it to say that asking workers not to embark on that exercise without interfacing and finding out what exactly is the issue is not fair to the state government.
“Recall too that over the weekend the NULGE Secretary issued a letter to that effect as well. So we are using this opportunity to disabuse the minds of our civil servants and members of the public who may have been misled by the false alarm and wrong narrative by the Abia state chapter of the NLC,” Prince Kanu explained.
The Commissioner equally described as unfair to the Abia state government, the attitude of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, who, over the weekend, issued a statement to the effect that their executives did not represent them well during the discussions and subsequent agreement that led to the payment of their outstanding pensions in the state.
Prince Okey Kanu noted that it was funny that the complaint was coming after the pensioners had received bank credit alerts of their pensions.
Responding to the question on the clash between the Isu community in Arochukwu LGA and Ukwa in Cross River state over the weekend, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Media and Publicity, Mr. Ferdinand Ekeoma said that the state government is fully involved in the matter and intervening to secure lives, adding that “government is on top of it”.
He equally disclosed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has started inviting those indicted by the forensic audit report which the state government conducted through an international audit firm KPGM.
