Gov. Dickson engages Bayelsa workers in war against corruption

Posted by admin Bayelsa, Headlines, State News Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

Governor Henry Seriake Dickson has engaged the civil servants in Bayelsa State in the current war his administration is waging against corruption. This is just as he said the Senior Secondary Board, the Environmental Sanitation Authority, the Health services and the Local Government areas are places his administration would probe in its bid to smash the web of corruption in the state.

Dickson who stated this at the May Day rally held at the Isaac Boro Peace Park, disclosed that civil servants are to serve as whistle blowers on corrupt practices through the following telephone numbers, 08160000072, 08160000074 and 08160000079.

While maintaining that his government was ready to exercise the needed political will to confront the corruption that was ravaging the state, he appealed to the civil servants to continue to cooperate with the verification team to fish out all those behind the corruption in the state.

According to him, the cartel involved in the sharp practices have devised various means through which they fleeced the state and which his administration has introduced measures to curb. His words: “I am committed to investigate how come we have that bloated wage bill.

If other governments before me do not have the political will, I am going to exercise it the political will. I want to commend your cooperation with the verification team to salvage our state. Our preliminary investigation is that this huge wage bill is not because of increase in employment but due to sharp practices over the years by a cartel. This cartel use various methods like adding non-salaries items, inclusion of ghost workers, falsification of grade levels, inclusion of retired and dead workers in the vouchers’”

Dickson who pointed out that no civil servant would be allowed to collect salary from one ministry stated that the supervision of payment of salaries in one of the MDAs in February and March uncovered a fraud of N200 monthly
He announced that henceforth Permanent Secretaries have been directed to take full responsibility of their workers’ salaries to plug all fund leakages, which the computerized system at the Treasury encouraged.
On the welfare of civil servants, Dickson promised that his government would be labour friendly and would work on all legitimate demands of demands, adding however that Bayelsa workers should know that the days of truancy, absenteeism and indiscipline are over as Permanent Secretaries have been given the power to sanitize their ministries.

-Sunwp_posts