If the discoveries at the Rivers State Urban Beautification, Parks and Gardens are anything to go by, then heads would definitely roll at the agency.
According to the placards-carrying protesting staff last week at its Aba Road premises, some persons in the agency connived to Swindle millions of Naira which has crippled the agency.” The Spokesman of the peaceful protesters who did not disclose his name called for the sacking and prosecution of some officers for the alleged crime against humanity.
These cabal were alleged to be involved in flooding the pay roll vouchers with ghost workers whose salaries they share on monthly basis; leasing or outright selling of the Government Parks and diversion of the proceeds as well as reckless spending of allocation. The staff equally alleged that accounting system and the administration of the Ministry of Environment’s parastatal is in shamble. The straw that perhaps broke the Carmel’s back is the swindling of the staff recently for promotion purposes. According to the disclosure, the staff numbering over 200 were made to cough out huge sum of money purportedly meant for the Departmental Selection Board and Senior Staff Committee to influence their promotion.
However, inspite of this action the said promotion process was abruptly terminated without any explanation and this infuriated the staff especially with the forfeiture of their hard earned money.
The staff at a point marched down to the Special Adviser en mass to demand for explanation, but she refused to come out of her office. This infuriated the staff the more and they locked her up in her office for over an hour before sympathizers appealed to them to release her for God’s sake.
When she was eventually released, she abandoned the crowd and escaped in her car prompting them to take to the street as an alternative. The office of the Head of Service (HOS) we gathered has waded into the matter but the staff say they don’t have confidence in their intervention, adding that anything short of sacking and prosecuting the culprits will be resisted in the interest of the state.###
