…Commissioner pockets over
N600million through ghost workers
If Governor Udom Emmanuel were to
apply his power where mouth is then Dr Iniobong Essien, the current
commissioner for environment should be on his way out of government and back to
his medical practice if the recent call for his removal is anything to go by.
The Hon. Commissioner has come to be
in the eye of the storm recently ever since he started the plot to downsize the
ministry’s casual work force.
The Block housing the Ministry of
Environment and Mineral Resources in the state secretariat came under siege
throughout last week as angry mobs of frustrated workers took over the entire
premises threatening they were going to set the block on fire. The mammoth
crowds of protesters which were made up of mostly women an youths (males and
females) took over the entrance of the ministry and other entry points saying
they would not go home nor give way until their demands were made by the
commissioner.
These are the field workers employed
by the Green Brigade, an initiative of the wife of the former governor, Mrs.
Unoma Akpabio. They include road sweepers, drainage and refuse evacuators.
THE INK newspaper learns that upon
the coming of the Udom administration last years, the new ministry helmsman,
Dr. Iniobong Essien advised the Governor against the continued use of
contractors to execute the various cleaning jobs. That was how the Ministry
started the direct labour programme of sweeping, litter control, waste
management and drainage decongestion.
A reliable source at the Ministry
hinted that the Commissioner and his boys who became supervisors made good
money from the business of paying salaries to non-existent workers so much so
that one job portion that should and was actually handled by five workers was
on paper being taken care of by fifty to seventy workers.
Apart from the issue of ghost
workers, the source said there was also the issue of over staffing to the
extent that the wage bill of the ministry of environment alone was always
surpassing that of two other ministries put together.
When the governor found out the scam,
he ordered the embattled commissioner to, as a matter of urgency, return the
jobs to contractors and the contractual fees due each of the jobs were slashed.
Trouble started for the former
personal physician to former Governor Godswill Akpabio when he could not
convince the new contractors to inherit the over-bloated work force more so as
the money now approved for them could not pay the workers on ground. The only
way out was for some of the workers to be laid off.
By the time the laying-off exercise
started, the workers were already being owed some two months pay which is now
running into the third month.
Some of the protesting workers who
spoke to our reporter wondered why the commissioner could be as heartless as to
plot to sack them without first paying them the arrears of their salaries.
“Today we will not leave this place
until Iniobong Essien gives us our money. He’s an idiot. Upon all the money
he’s making on our heads. He still wants to frustrate us in addition. We know
we were engaged as casual staff, which means we could be asked to go home at
any time. But sending us away without our entitlements fully paid is what we
will not take, “one of the refuse collectors fumed.
Our reporter learned that a common
request on the lips of all the protesters apart from demanding for the full
payment of their owed salaries is that governor Udom Emmauel should sack the
environment commissioner, Dr Iniobong Essien in line with his government’s
much-touted zero-tolerance to corruption. A reliable source told the paper that
the commissioner and his cohorts have illegally made over N600million from the
ghost workers scam.
One of the staff of the Ministry who
seems to be loyal to the commissioner
spoke under condition of anonymity saying that the commissioner is a
thorough-bred professional and a seasoned Christian who according to him, was
incapable of perpetuating such work place evil.
But efforts
to get to the commissioner himself or his media aide did not yield any positive
fruit as they could not be reached on phone.
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