The Anambra State Government Local Government Service Commission has announced the discovery of over 427 ghost workers in the state.

The commission also disclosed that 57 dead staff were still receiving salaries across the 21 Local Government Areas of Anambra State.

The Chairman of Anambra State Local Government Service Commission, Vin Ezeaka, disclosed this in a statement on Friday, July 5, 2024.

Ezeaka noted that an investigation was launched in a bid to sanitising the local government system where over 427 workers were discovered to have been on the government payroll without being staff.

Ezeaka said out of the 427 ghost workers already uncovered, 59 were staff of the commission who had died long time ago and were still receiving salaries.

He said 40 others had retired and were still on the payroll of the commission, while about 11 others were staff living abroad whose names were still on the payroll of government.

The chairman said: “We discovered 59 deceased staff who are still receiving salaries, 40 retirees also receiving salaries and above all,

“We discovered 222 workers on the payroll who nobody could identify as workers in any of the 21 LGAs and we have many of them living abroad and still receiving salaries, so we wrote to the Joint Account, JAC to remove them from payroll.

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“Some of them have come to voluntarily retire but we refused because you can’t cheat government and want to retire. We are going to finish our thorough investigation and those we caught in this unholy act will face the full weight of the law in accordance with civil service rules.

“Apart from this discovery, at the end of May 2024, something dramatic happened. We descended on the Certificate racketeering cartel within the local government system. We set up a committee which came up with report of people with suspicious certificates working in various local government areas of Anambra State and we then set up a screening committee that indicted so many of them.

“Those indicted were identified and we started investigating the certificates they presented to the committee and went as far as going to the universities whose certificates they brandished and out of the 20 persons who tendered Imo State University certificates, we screened 14 so far where we discovered that six out of the 14 were fake certificates.

“So we have dealt with that aspect also. It is our duty to sanitise the system in line with the mandate given to us by Governor Chukwuma Soludo so that the genuine workers who sacrifice their time and energy could get value for their service and not looters who do not contribute anything to the development of Anambra State.”

Ezeaka further disclosed that the ongoing local government and certificate verification committees were not for any witch-hunt but to sanitise the system, adding that senior local government staff, including Deputy Directors and Treasurers were also sacked for fake certificates.

The Star