The uncertain fate of 2,500 workers in Cross River State, whose names were removed from the state’s payroll, appears certain now with state governor, Ben Ayade, making a firm promise that the names of the affected workers will be pay rolled again.
Ayade who spoke in Calabar while addressing the affected workers at the U. J. Esuene stadium, also maintained that, their employment was without his knowledge, as “the Civil Service Commission did the employment without recourse to me.”
On the picture being painted to give the impression that his government sacked the workers, the governor came clear that it was an erroneous impression, especially when in fact his government has employed a lot of workers into the state workforce after lifting an 18-year-old embargo on employment.
Particularly, the situation at the Cross River State Water Board, he said, was dire “when I came in because staff there had not been paid for a very long time, because they were ad-hoc staff. I decided to convert them to permanent staff, made them civil servants, payrolled them and paid their backlog. If you were the governor of the state and you suddenly discovered an additional 2,500 staff on your payroll that you did not authorize, that you did not know about, nobody consulted you, what will you do?”, Ayade asked the crowd.
He asked the delisted workers to submit themselves for verification geared towards regularization, saying he has decided to get them reabsorbed into the service out of compassion. The verification exercise has since commenced with hordes of the affected workers already verified.
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