The Kogi State Enterprise Development Agency (KEDA) has declared that all its 26 adhoc staff have been paid their entitlements and are officially disengaged, following the expiration of the World Bank programme (NG-CARES).

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of KEDA, Muhammad Kadiri Okeji, disclosed this to newsmen on Friday in Lokoja.

He said that when he took over the mantle of leadership of the agency in March 2024, he inherited complaints of unpaid salaries to the ad-hoc staff.

According to him, he quickly drew the attention of the state government and other critical stakeholders to the complaints, noting that Governor Ahmed Ododo ordered that the 26 ad-hoc staff of the agency be paid their backlog of salaries.

The MD further explained that the governor’s directive was carried out without delay, with the 15 months of unpaid salaries claimed by the ad-hoc staff being paid to them, along with an additional two months’ salary in lieu of notice of disengagement.

He added that after all the payments were made, the agency served them with disengagement letters, as KEDA no longer had any programme requiring their services.

Okeji wondered why the ad-hoc staff were still making noise over their disengagement when, throughout 2023, they remained idle, doing nothing for the agency, yet were paid for 15 months.

“The 26 ad-hoc staff worked from 2022 to early 2023, and their engagement was terminated in 2023. However, the agency did not issue them disengagement letters because it was expected that, as the first phase of the NG-CARES ended, the second phase would commence immediately, but such expectation eluded the agency.

“Without delay, the agency paid them the 15 months of unpaid salaries they claimed, despite available evidence showing that they did not work for that period. Again, we paid them two months’ salary in lieu of notice of disengagement, when ordinarily it was supposed to be one month.

“Having done all of that, we issued them letters of disengagement to prevent a recurrence of such incidents, but to our surprise, they were still making noise about why the agency disengaged them when they had no work to do for KEDA,” the MD explained.

He further revealed that it was in the plans of the agency to empower the laid-off ad-hoc staff through the federal government Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) program and urged them to desist from tarnishing the good image of the agency.