One thousand and seventy one illegal workers were uncovered in the employ of the Kwara State government, it was learnt yesterday. The government said it lost N400 million monthly to the illegal workers in the last few months.
Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development Alhaji Musa Yeketi spoke at the book launch of the former Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Alhaji Shehu AbdulGafar.
Yeketi attributed the incident to dishonesty among civil servants, adding that appropriate actions were being taken against those culpable.
A lawyer, Malam Yusuf Ali, identified irregular salaries and poor pay as some factors responsible for corruption and sharp practices in the civil service.
In his paper, Public Service Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Alli lamented that civil servants were aiding corruption.
“In recent times, top public officers have been accused of embezzling gratuities and pensions of retired colleagues. Poor remuneration has exposed civil servants to sharp practices; most of them demand money before rendering their service to the public.
“They keep business letter-headed papers, invoice-receipts of their companies and become suppliers and contractors, even in their offices,” he said.
Noting that no country can develop beyond the capacity of its public service, the legal luminary posited that “there is unfortunately a broad consensus among Nigerians that our public service is both broken and dysfunctional.
“The quality of our public servants and the service they provide are below expectation. Unlike the days of yore, when only the best and brightest competed to join the administrative service, our public service is now seen as the employer of the dull, the lazy and the corrupt.”
Ali called for training and retraining of civil servants to enable them adapt to modern trends, adding that the civil service should be repositioned to be the information pool which commissioners and ministers rely on for effective administration.
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