Kogi Assembly, negotiating council condemn screening committee report

Kogi State House of Assembly has condemned the screening committee report released to MDAs and local councils.

It urged the governor to commence payment of the workers and suspend the report forthwith.

The House, in a unanimous decision condemned it after a motion by Friday Paul Sanni Makama, representing Igalamela/Odolu State Constituency, stating that the exercise, which started since the inception of the present administration, has lingered for eternity.

Also, Victor Adewale Omofaye, representing Ijumu State Constituency, said: “When the issue of this screening exercise popped up at the outset, I made it categorically clear that it is not the way to go.”

In the same vein, the state public service joint negotiating council has taken a swipe at the state government for the shoddy report.

The report had raised a lot of controversies since it was released on Monday.

Workers, whose names did not appear, alleged that their names were omitted not because they are ghosts but because of incompetence of the committee members.

After its meeting, the council condemned the outcome of the exercise, describing it as a premeditated attempt to decimate the service in the state.

A statement by Secretary of the Council, Mr. Isah Abubakar, said: “Some civil servants were unjustly put on retirement list, while the names of those that have been enjoying salaries since January 2016 till December 2016 disappeared from the cleared or uncleared list according to the released reports.”

It also picked holes in the report because the logo and stamp of the state was conspicuously missing just as the screening committee chairman and his secretary did not append their signatures.

The statement said these flaws were enough to render the documents as invalid as it must have been manipulated.

The council also reiterated its position against the plan to retain the auditor-general, Alhaji Yusuf Okala and four others that served actively in all phases of previous committees as heads of the appeal committee arising from the exercise.

It described the plan as an effort to make them judges in their own cases even as it noted in particular that the state chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) who has been serving in the screening committee has been there on his own personal capacity and not as representative of the organised labour.