The Abia government has denied the report on the sack of 10,000 civil workers.
Okey Kanu, the Commissioner for Information and Culture, revealed this in a conversation with journalists in Umuahia on Wednesday.
“The report on the sack of Abia workers by Gov. Alex Otti is fake and unfounded,” according to him.
He stated that the administration implemented various procedures to address the issue of ghost workers, and that as part of its mission to clean up the civil service, the identities of ghost workers were deleted from the government’s payroll.
“Some workers whose names were thrown up during the verification embarked upon by government as illegally employed were affected too.
“This group, comprises of those who were illegally employed from December 2022 up until March and April this year,” Kanu noted.
Some of the federal workers in this group, he claims, had their appointment letters backdated.
He stated:
“The employment of these individuals can be best described as surreptitious and a bait used to pile underserved pressure on the present administration, adding that no responsible government would allow such a situation to continue.”
Kanu further stated that no exemptions were used in the hiring of staff between December and April.
cc: Vanguard Ng
