In the past five (5) months the local government staff in Rivers staff are passing through unbearable pains due to the non-payment of salary and arrears. By the time the immediate past caretaker committee chairmen left office in the expiration of their tenure they piled up three (3) months unpaid salary for the incoming ones.
The non performance of the past CTC chairmen gave Governor Ezenwo Wike much concern. And the governor did not hide his feeling. He scolded the ex-CTC chairmen during a stakeholders’ meeting held in Government House, Port Harcourt, last month.
The governor frowned at the non-challant attitude of the ex-CTC chairmen while in office towards the council staff.
Information filtered into our newsroom revealed that as the new CTC chairmen engaged and met with some principal officers such as Head of Personnel Management HPM, Treasurers, Head of Local Government Administration (HLGA) and other influential staff, various documents tendered at the meeting exposed the high rate of corruption and the misappropriation of public funds by the ex-CTC chairmen while in office.
In one of the Ikwerre speaking LGAs, the HPM told the new CTC chairman that the immediate past CTC chairmen collected N30m each month while in office.
According to the HPM, the former CTC chairman exhibited an high level of fraud, adding that he couldn’t even paid salary of workers.
The ugly information is not different in one of the riverine LGAs, where the ex-CTC chairman was said to have absconded with the money meant for the payment of political appointees.
We reliably gathered that some of the ex-CTC chairmen slept in hotels, womanizing and refused to report to their duty posts, thereby made nonsense of the local government system in the state.
A top administrator in the Rivers State Local Government service commission told our correspondent that, “when you put together the fund the ex-CTC chairmen embezzled it was summed up to about N500m.
In my mind, they are wicked and greedy”. He called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other anti-graft agencies to investigate and bring to book all those ex-CTC chairmen involved in the embezzlement of the council funds while in office. ###
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