Secret Reporters No place to hide
More facts have emerged over the circumstances surrounding the sack of two labour union leaders of Delta State Polytechnic, Ogwashi-Uku over phantom charges by the school council and management.
Beyond union issues, Chapter chairman of ASUP, Barr. Tobechukwu Ogidi corroborated his counterpart Comrade Anthony Ezaga of NASUP that their sack was not unconnected with the employment of over 300 persons who were said to have paid their way into the system.
Chairman of ASUP said some of the persons affected had written to him complaining that their names have been removed from government payroll, and management is not giving them any explanation.
“But the government seems to be punishing one part because giving and taking bribe are two offences rolled into one. Government seems to be avoiding those people employed. The panel should also invite them and hear from those people employed. ”
The figure of those employed is over 300 but the position of the state government is that they were not given approvals, and that is why those people have not been paid for the past nine months, even though most of them are still coming to work and performing their job”, the ASUP Chairman disclosed.
The management claimed the rector and registrar’s signatures were forged in the letters of appointment, without their knowledge.
But we gathered that the brother to the registrar, Henry Onyewenu was caught and he confessed to being involved in employment racketeering in 2014, yet he was neither put on interdiction nor sacked. “Everything about the employment racket is a fraud.
It is not possible to talk to those who were affected because they are still trying to save their jobs. “The issue is if you have about 300 people working illegally in an organization and management is saying that they don’t know anything about them, who opened files for them? Who posted them to different departments? “How did they get approval to compute their financial details and send to pre-audit and put on payroll?
Those are not the things that clerks do; without the approval of the rector nobody is going to open file for you. ”
Without the directive of the Rector and registrar, no staff in personnel will touch your issue and these people are still working till today. “If they claim that they don’t know the people and government has through one way or the day exposed them as illegal employees, they should have left the place but as we speak, they are still working. “How can they now say their signatures were forged or that they don’t know how those people got into the system?”, a source queried. Investigations revealed that some of the affected employees had their employment back dated illegally in order to claim arrears. The employment racket was from 2013.
Apart from 22 people, all others do not have approvals. Besides the over 300 academic staff, the rector and registrar were said to have employed over 200 non academic staff illegally as permanent staff and ad-hoc staff on a wage of N20,000 for junior staff and N50,000 for senior staff. It was learnt some of job seekers paid up to N1.2 million for job placement.
We also know for a fact that the state government has set up a panel to investigate the school. When journalists sought the reactions of the rector over the allegations of employment racket in the institution, she threatened: “Mr. Man were you hired to embarrass me!? Listen to me, if you are prepared for court then go ahead!”, and hung up, refusing to pick further calls.
Barely an hour later, a caller who identified himself as Felix called this reporter on phone “on behalf of the Rector”, apparently to redress the Rector’s unruly response to the reporter. He said the Rector is restrained from commenting on the issue until the State Government’s Panel’s report is officially released.
