Osun workers set to sue consulting firm for declaring them ghost workers
Public Servants in Osun State have concluded plans to drag a consulting company, Sally Tibbot Limited to court for classifying them as ‘ghost workers’.
They said their resolve to seek legal redress is necessary because the lead consultant have soiled and defamed their careers of several decades.
The workers’ response came a day after Sally Tibbot addressed the media alleging that the Osun state government is harbouring and covering up ghost workers in her employment by refusing to implement the report of a controversial staff audit.
Osun State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Oluomo Kolapo Alimi said the workers across various agencies in multiple reach out to the state government, decried the defamation and character assassination the consultant perpetrated by declaring them as ghost workers.
The workers were furious that the company is still referring to them as ghost workers after they had shown up for verification and had been duly captured and had even expressed readiness to show themselves to the company as genuine workers with unblemished records of service with the state government.
The Commissioner in a statement yesterday said the workers blamed the consultant for messing up the staff audit by her maltreatment of workers and her inhuman treatment of many top civil servants as well as her refusal to decentralised the auditing exercise, accusing her of coming for the contract with an ulterior motive to defraud the state and tarnish the image of the state government.
Alimi said “the workers affected included the Vice Chancellor of the Osun State University, staff of polytechnics, several top professors, Deans, provosts among others. More than ten agencies alongside several tertiary institutions were not covered and workers in those agencies were declared ghost workers.
“It is also on record that the consultant declared the state governor, the deputy governor, the Secretary to the state government and more than two thirds of political appointees in the state as ghost workers.”
According to the Commissioner, the Osun State Government had responded by debunking allegations of alleged cover up and described the press briefing by the company as a subtle blackmail to force a fraudulent staff audit report on the state.
“The state government said the unusually high numbers of alleged ghost workers by the consultant led to a re-verification exercise which shockingly revealed extensive inflation of the supposed number of ghost workers and which showed that those the company claimed were ghost workers were legitimate employees of the state government.
“The State Government further proposed to furnish the company with proof of the existence of each of these workers, if the same is required. However, the company did not at any point in time request for such proof nor send an acceptance letter for payment based on about 1,316 workers who were not seen.
“The government noted that the entire saga became more suspicious, especially as company’s fees was based on the amount of money she saves the State government on the payroll, indicating that the company’s claim was based on greed especially going by the consultant’s high handedness, open exclusion of staff during auditing process and deliberate maltreatment of workers that characterised the entire audit processes.
“The state Government further submitted that while it was eager to clean up the state payroll, it can not in good conscience remove legitimate state government employees from the payroll and cannot submit to an audit report that has the potential to further defraud the state government.
“Submitting that it is within its right to review an audit report before implementation, the government noted that the existence of open gaps, verifiable lapses, several battles during the audit process and high number of ghost workers compelled the setting up of a verification committee as a prelude to the implementation of the staff audit report,” Alimi said.
