State Abia State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on the recovery of government properties is probing the sack of some staff of Abia State Environmental Protection Agency, ASEPA, in 2015.
Mrs Charity Ukonu and former head of accounts of ASEPA, Mrs Nnebuihe Onwusoro, have appeared before the panel following a petition brought against them by Mr Paul Okoli and the sacked workers.
Speaking while defending her case, Ukonu said in the course of the ASEPA staff verification exercise carried out by her team, she discovered that the petitioners were not dully employed by the state government and challenged them to present their letter of waiver for employment.
She said that as a trained civil servant who understood the implication, she ordered the payroll officer of ASEPA, Chinwengozi Anyaso, to withhold their salaries pending further investigation into their alleged illegal employment.
She disclosed that when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, invited her for interrogation on some issues concerning the state, she discovered that the disengaged ASEPA workers were paid three months salaries.
Also defending why she withheld the salaries of the disengaged workers, the former head of accounts with ASEPA, Mrs Nnebuihe Onwusoro said that she carried out a directive given to her by the salary verification committee not to payroll them as civil service policy demands.
But Mr Okoli Paul Tobechukwu, who responded on behalf of the sacked workers, told the panel that they were dully employed by ASEPA .
Tobechukwu noted that the Charity Ukonu-led verification committee refused to reinstate him and other disengaged workers, despite the directive of the Abia State House of Assembly Committee on Public Accounts, which ordered that they be recalled and payed their entitlements.
