The Cross River State Government has saved about N650 million from 3,000 workers for June and July, the Commissioner for Local Governments, Mr Onoh John Ulafor, revealed.
Ulafor, who briefed reporters in Calabar, the state capital, during the World Teachers Day celebration organised by the state wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), said the government achieved this through its biometric verification.
The commissioner said the verification caused the delay in the payment of primary school teachers and other local government workers.
He said: “Cross River is not owing salaries. The issue of teachers’ salaries and local government workers happened because we decided to do a verification. We discovered that there were lots of ghost workers is the system. So, we thought that the verification would keep us at a position where we would pay salaries without owing. We got consultants, and with the banks, did the verification. Biometrics takes some time.
“As we have finished the biometrics, we should begin to pay. That delay took us from June to July. As I speak to you, all local government workers have been paid and about 80 per cent of teachers have been paid.
He added that the 20 per cent remaining is because while they were filling their forms, some of them were indebted to some banks and decided to change their banks to new ones to undo the banks.
