The Chairman, Ekiti West Local Government Area in Ekiti State, Mr. Olugbenga Ogunleye, has said that the local government has discovered no fewer than 252 ghost workers in the employment of the council.

The chairman said this on Thursday in Aramoko, the headquarters of the local government, in an interview with journalists.

Ogunleye, who lamented that the council had been plunged into debt by the fraudulent persons disguising as workers in the council, said that it was unbelievable that some of the fake workers even went for promotion interview on the day they were issued with the fake employment letters.

He said, “We were recording a deficit of N3m since January but by May, we were able to detect where the deficit was coming from. It was coming form salaries paid to those ghost workers who were not included in the budget.

‘‘The verification exercise which revealed these ghost workers has saved us from total indebtedness. We incurred N12m debt before we detected them.”

He explained that some of the ghost workers got their ‘employment letters’ by making photocopies of original letters issued to some genuine workers and altered the names and the years of employment.

He said, “To give an impression that they are not new in the service, some of them back-dated their letters to 2006. I was curious when we had a shortfall of N3m in January, but we couldn’t detect where it came from until May when we carried out a verification exercise. Our in-house verification revealed 252 ghost workers.”