Federal civil servants on Tuesday protested the removal of over 17,000 workers from the monthly payroll of the federal government on the platform of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Daily Trust reports that the federal government had delisted over 17,000 government employees from the IPPIS platform for failing to comply with a verification exercises spanning over five years.
But addressing journalists in Abuja, the civil servants under the aegis of Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), alleged that there were some discrepancies in the IPPIS verification process.
President of ASCSN, Comrade Tommy Etim Okon, told newsmen that names of Personal Assistants (PAs), Special Advisers (SAs) and in some cases Ministers who had served in successive governments were found on the portal.
While calling the workers to remain calm since measures were being taken to address the situation, Okon also criticised his members, wondering why most genuine civil servants feigned ignorance of the verification exercise, while it lasted.
He, however, noted that the office of the Head of Service of the Federation has given a one-week period for affected employees who were erroneously omitted from the IPPIS portal to forward their documents for update, provided they had genuine cases.
He said, “We called your attention to what we heard or information at our disposal just few days ago, we received an information that over 17,000 workers in the core civil service did not carry out the online verification which was done by the office of the Head of Service of the Federation.
“Quickly we swung into action to interface with the government through the HoSF and by that singular act, there was need for us to talk to our members and that informed the reasons, because we have seen a lot of apprehensions from our members, receiving several phone calls, then we also looked at the timing because of the social economic challenges.
“We went deep into the document where we also realised that even in some government agencies, we realised that names of PAs, SAs and some Ministers were included in the IPPIS portal, whereas those people were political office holders in their own rights in various regimes.”
