Ondo discovers 9,000 illegally employed workers

The Ondo State government, on Tuesday, said no fewer than 9,000 people were illegally employed into the services of the local government in the state.
The Head of Service (HOS), Mrs Kosemani Kolawole, who said this while addressing journalists on the 2013 Civil Service Week, however, declared that the verification exercise was not meant to witchhunt anybody.
She said after the verification exercise in the local government service across the 18 local government areas of the state, 6,000 junior workers and 3,000 senior workers were discovered to have been illegally employed.
According to her, the goal of the exercise was to fish out workers that were more than 60 years of age and those that have spent more than 35 years in service, in order to make the public service more productive.
While noting that government had just concluded the verification exercise of local government workers, she added that the verification exercise of primary school teachers and (SUBEB) were ongoing.
Kosemani, however, lamented that a lot of revelations were made during the exercise which required tendering of primary school leaving certificate, birth certificate, first letter of appointment and last letter of promotion.
She stated that many people were discovered to have left primary school at the age of six, while the exercise showed that some of them began primary school at the age of one of two.
Apart from this, the HOS said the exercise revealed that many people that had died or had retired from the service were still being paid monthly salaries, while children of officers that were still in higher institutions of learning were on the payroll of government.
She, however, commended the state government for its effort in repositioning the state civil service by building the capacity of the work force that can face the challenges of public service in the 21st Century.
The HOS said government had released N20 million for training of the work force, adding that  about 250 senior and 300 junior officers had benefitted from different trainings organised by the state government for the civil servants in the state.
She said, “workers in the state have never had it so good in the area of promotion, the 2013 promotion exercise has been conducted and all those that are due for promotion will soon be issued their letters by the Civil Service Commission.”
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