The Kano State Public Complaint and Anti-Corruption Commission says it has detected 1, 134 ghost workers with foreign names in the payroll of the state government.

This is contained in a statement by the Public Relations Officer of the anti-graft agency, Shabbana Abdul’aziz, in Kano on Monday.

Abdul’aziz said the commission was able to detect the names during an investigation it carried out based on a tip-off.

“We initiated an investigation based on information which was made available to the commission into an alleged insertion of foreign names into Kano state government payroll,” the statement said.

She said the investigation revealed that some staff of the Ministry of Finance connived with some local government officials to illegally insert ghost names as workers into the government payroll.

According to her, the perpetrators of the illegal act took advantage of the e-payment system which unified and centralised salary payment of the entire state workers.

Abdul’aziz explained that most of those detected had fake letters of appointment, and some could not explain where they work.

“The commission, therefore, requests the office of the state Head of Service to suspend salary payment of the detected names pending the completion of the investigation.

“This is necessary because of the strong evidence suggesting official corruption and abuse of office in their employment or insertion into the payroll.”

According to her, the commission has in the course of the investigation, come across those who claim to have been transferred from other establishments to SUBEB.

“The commission is now trying to determine the validity of their claim,” she said. (NAN)