…As Over 11,000 Civil Servants And Pensioners Yet To Complete Verification Process
Abia State Government has extended the verification exercise for civil servants and pensioners in the state to two weeks.
The Commissioner for Information and strategic communications, Prince Okey Kanu disclosed said this on Monday while addressing newsmen at the Government House, Umuahia on the outcome of this week’s State Executive Council chaired by Governor Alex Otti.
The Commissioner said that the verification extension directive was given to enable yet to be verified persons to participate in the exercise.
Prince Kanu said that the government had embarked on the civil service reforms to build a strong and viable system that would facilitate the achievement of its rebuilding agenda.
He noted that the verification exercise of workers remains one of the major aspects of the reforms that would happen in the civil service.
The Commissioner urged the affected persons to utilize the period of grace to get verified “or else there will be closure to that exercise”.
In her contribution, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Special Duties, Dr Betty Obasi, said that 62, 479 civil servants and pensioners had been verified, while 11,479 individuals had either not participated or completed their verification.
Dr Betty Obasi(Right)
She said that the government had set up a verification committee made of relevant stakeholders, to ensure that the exercise would be credible and added that the verification of Abia workers and pensioners which commenced in July, was part of the state governments effort to sanitize the system.
Obasi said: “Some started and could not complete because something was obviously wrong with them being part of the system.
“So, what we are doing is to put out the names of the 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.
“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”.
She charged people that had issues with getting fully verified to visit the complaints desk office in the Ministry of Finance for appropriate action to be taken in resolving the issue.
