The Gombe State Government has uncovered 523 ghost workers and saved N1.5 billion from the civil servants verification exercise in the past three years.
Gov. Inuwa Yahaya stated this during the induction of the newly recruited biometric supervisors, on Thursday in Gombe.
Represented by his deputy, Manassah Jatau, the governor said the government saved about N1.5 billion from 523 workers who failed to show up for the biometric exercise since inception in October, 2021.
Yahaya said the biometric management system was designed to address the uncertainty in the number of workers at both the state and local government levels.
He said the introduction and deployment of 4,000 Biometric Machines Attendance Register across the state helped to address issues of ghost workers.
According to Yahaya, the trend places financial burden on governments at all levels, and negatively affeced infrastructure, social and economic development projects.
“So far this novel initiative has saved government, a monthly sum of N23,758,858 since 2021.
“Drawn the recognition and support of international organisations, for example, the World Bank, Development Partners like the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization (GAVI) which saw this as a model to be emulated by others,” he said.
He tasked the personnel to focus on solving technical glinches, adding that they were expected to oversee the effective operation of the programme to serve as link between employees and the biometric secretariat, among others.
Also, the Commissioner for Finance, Malam Muhammad Magaji, said the Gombe government earned four million dollars under the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme.
Magaji described it as a huge investment for the Inuwa Yahaya administration’s efforts towards ensuring good governance to improve the wellbeing of the people.