The Enugu State Monitoring Team on Work Attendance and Productivity has paid an unscheduled visit to the Ezeagu Local Government headquarters at Aguobu-Owa where they issued queries to absentee council workers and also read the riot act to civil servants in the state.
The team was received by the Chief Executive Officer, Administration, at the council, Mrs. Lorita Akwuchie.
The unscheduled visit followed a video, which went viral on the social media, recently, showing the local government headquarters deserted on Friday, April 5, contrary to the directive by the Dr. Peter Mbah Administration to civil servants in the state to revive productivity by working five days in a week.
It is recalled that the Mbah Administration is currently undertaking a staff audit of local government councils as it emerged that many of the people on the payroll, who also transit to the state’s pension payroll, do not come to work at all, while many others live outside the state and the country even as they draw salaries and other benefits from the local government system.
However, the voice-over in the viral video narrated that no single staff was found on duty, a development that has drawn the wrath of the government and the general public.
Taking a tour of all the offices and departments in the council headquarters, the team, which comprised the Head of Service, Mr. Kenneth Ugwu; Principal Secretary to the Governor, Mr. Ken Chukwuegbo; Chairman, Enugu State Chapter of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Ben Asogwa; and the Chairman, Joint Public Service Negotiating Council, Comrade Ezekiel Omeh, among others, met only 36 out of the over 200 council workers.
The team vowed that the acts of negligence and absence from duty without permission by the council workers would not go unpunished and reminded civil servants across the state that productivity remained the watchword in the Governor Peter Mbah Administration.
The Head of Service, Mr. Ugwu, who led the Monitoring Team directed that queries be issued to all the council workers not found on duty.
“As you are aware, the administration is carrying out a diligent audit of local government workforce in the state. The standard is that you must not only come to work, you must also have assigned responsibilities and proof of fulfilling them. We are also introducing electronic clock-in. The watchword is productivity because that is the only way to build our economy from $4.4bn to $30bn because every segment of the society and every arm and every organ of government must contribute its quota for that growth to be possible,” Ugwu said.