Who Is A Ghost Worker In Civil Service?

The civil service remains one of the dignified
functionary for the enhancement of the entire citizenry. Actually, the civil service is supposed to be decent in all its activities, hence, it is supposed to be a vanguard of sound ethical practice.
However, it is most regrettable that the service has been polluted by unscrupulous elements in the society. The civil service has been turned into “ghost domain,” whereby the genuine and sincere civil servants are wrongly classified or identified as ghost workers irrespective of years of service.
For instance, the ugly scenario is identified even in institutions of higher learning. One could imagine that workers’ salaries are unnecessarily delayed because of  ghost workers. There has been screening and verification of vouchers as a result of this ugly trend.
Several staff audit panels have been established by the state government to proffer a lasting solution to the problem of ghost workers in the ministries, extra-ministerial departments and parastatals alike. Even some personnel officers were mandated by the state government to closely monitor and supervise the physical payment of salaries by ‘cash’ to workers at various segments of government-owned establishments in Rivers State.
It came to a stage where workers became tired of filling one form or the other in the course of identifying who is a ghost worker. In addition, photograph shots were taken by the audit panel to authenticate individual staff in the ministries and parastals.
The Rivers State University of Science and Technology, RSUST, was not left out as the tenth governing council of the institution also constituted an interview panel soon after assumption of office, under the Governing Council, Professor Godwin O. Tasie. Basically the panel interviewed all staff of the institution one by one based on the available nominal roll in order to sanitise the university system in compliance with government directive. Since then the vouchers have been prepared based on the verified staff.
During the payment of the medical allowance arrears to all workers, almost sixty percent of the workforce was not paid. And it was alleged that those names omitted were ghost workers. This development caused some embarrassment to the workers concerned and it took sometime before the error was corrected.
Ghost is described as the spirit of a dead person which appears to be living. Even the Bible states that dead people have nothing to do with the living. It is rather the living that is conscious of being subject to death someday (Eccl 9Vs 5-10). Therefore, the issue of ghost workers is fictitious and should not be mentioned in the service.
It would be recalled that soon after the end of the Civil War in Nigeria in the early 70s when the civil service was nothing to write home about, decency and dignity were maintained, irrespective of the meager remuneration or wages which could not be equated with the huge salaries of present-day civil servants earn.
Ghost workers should be eliminated from the civil service. I believe that if the directors or those who head departments in the ministries are determined, it will end. Similarly, the casualisation of workers should cease. This will also reduce the bloated wage bill in the civil service.
Ominyanwa is a public affairs analyst.
Goddy Ominyanwa