This was made known in Lokoja, the state capital, by an ad-hoc committee of the state House of Assembly constituted in November 2013 to investigate massive retrenchment in the councils.
Chairman of the 11-member ad-hoc committee, Alhaji Suleiman Babadoko, who presented the report, said additional 27 council staffers retired from service during the period. Babadoko added that only two local councils of Lokoja and Kogi, did not lay off staff in their findings. Overall, the 21 local councils in the state now have a total workforce of 24,671 against 30,035 workforce having laid off 5,337 as 27 retired.
Babadoko also explained that the chairmen of affected councils laid of their staffers following dwindling allocations from the Federation Account and over-bloated wage bills. However, the Local Government Service Commission claimed ignorance of the retrenchment.
The lawmaker stated that the committee also discovered that with the exception of Lokoja Local Government Area, councils in the state were indebted to their staffers over percentage payment of salaries between May, 2013 and May, 2014.
The House committee chairman also noted that though the councils claimed that the retrenchment was carried out on the basis of lack of genuine certificates, fake letters of appointments and other anomalies, several staffers with genuine employment records were also laid off.
The committee therefore recommended that any genuinely employed staffer on the retrenchment list especially those with Local Government Service Commission (LGSC) with appointment letters should be recalled and paid accordingly.
