Kano State Secretary to the Government (SSG), Dr Abdullahi Bichi, has said that the recruitment verification committee has uncovered 13-year-olds and some underage individuals receiving salaries as employees of the state government.
This is just as he disclosed that these underage children were discovered to be receiving their salary every month through the accounts of their parents, who were civil servants of the state.
Disclosing this on Friday while addressing a press conference, Dr Bichi stated that a total of 9,332 staff were found eligible by the committee that screened the 12,566 recruited by the previous administration of former governor Dr Abdullahi Ganduje.
The SSG added that “it could be recalled that at the inception of this administration, it had cause to direct for the suspension of the payment of the salaries of certain employees from the Civil Service of the State.”
According to him,” Most of those employed did not undergo screening and recruitment interviews as expected by the service regulations;
He further disclosed that “a number of students in their active study years were also found to be employed, including students of junior secondary schools, senior secondary schools and some in their early stages of tertiary education;
He hinted that the investigation also uncovered a number of people recruited who were found to be undergoing their National Service Programme (NYSC)
A number of people confirmed to be over- or under-aged were found to be employed on the State payroll, he said
The decision was informed by the seemingly ominous spree with which the last administration undertook mass employment into the service of the state without recourse to necessary guidelines and service regulations for that exercise.”
To achieve this objective, a 22-member technical committee of competent and experienced serving and retired technical servants was constituted to screen and verify the entire process leading to the recruitment exercise.
On the grounds of this necessity, all those who were wrongly employed had their salaries stopped pending a formal assessment of their records and processes of employment.
The committee, in view of the number of those employed, broke into three panels to handle the screening of the 12,566 as against the 10,800 earlier reported.
A number of those employed were found to have suspicious or forged certificates, while many non-indigenes were employed in spite of a large number of qualified unemployed indigenes roaming our streets.
The employment did not take into consideration the actual manpower needs of the respective MDAs but was influenced by the desire to tie down the new administration financially.
That those employed were wrongly placed through deployment to non-career posts or the calling of their respective qualifications;
He said that there were cases where officers with higher qualifications attracting senior cadre were employed on the junior cadre of the service, contrary to the needs of the MDAs and approval granted for such employments
