BY CHUWANG DUNGS
The Taraba state government on Tuesday says it has suspended two senior civil servants over the allegation of job racketeering.
The state Head Of the Civil Service (HOS), Paul Tino, disclosed this to Journalists in Jalingo the state capital.
He said one of the suspended officers is a staff of the state Civil Service Commission (CSC) while the other is a staff in the office of the state Accountant General.
Tino said after a series of complaints on the high numbers of ghost workers in the state, the state governor Agbu Kefas gave him and the state accountant general, Gaius Danjuma directive to conduct a verification exercise to fish out ghost workers in the state.
“The directive given to myself and the Accountant General of the state by the governor is to carry out verification exercises to fish out ghost workers to assist us to get this result,” he stated.
He said a committee was set up to conduct the exercise, noting that it was during the exercise that they discovered that the two officers connived and issued fake appointment letters to some graduates recruited by the last administration.
Mr Tino said the numbers of those with the fake appointment letters cannot be ascertained by now because the investigation is still ongoing.
“While we were carrying out a screening exercise to authenticate genuine civil servants, we discovered that some newly recruited unemployed youth who were recruited by the previous administration of Governor Darius Ishaku last year were given fake appointment letters.
“When we discovered the fake appointment letters, we withdrew them back, and set up a committee which later exposed the atrocities the two officers committed. They connived and printed fake appointment letters to a good number of unemployed youth,” Tino said.
He noted that the officers while on suspension will not receive their monthly salaries, until the report on the investigation is concluded.
DAYLIGHTREPORTERS gathered that in 2021, the last administration of Darius Ishaku, lifted an embargo on employment into the civil service.
Subsequently, the state CSC directed indigenes to apply by obtaining an online application form at the cost of N3,500.
Findings show that it was during that employment exercise that the suspended officers sold employment letters to hundreds of graduates.
