The Federal Government Secretariat in Benue State is currently facing threats as unchecked overgrown weeds and vandalism take their toll on the facility.
Our correspondent, who visited the secretariat on Wednesday, observed that the building was unkempt with dirt littered around the staircase and the surrounding overgrown with weeds.
Some workers at the secretariat, who preferred anonymity, blamed the situation on neglect by appropriate authorities saddled with the responsibility to tidy the environment and ensure the security of the facility.
“The cleaners no longer come to work. Vandals also cash in on the security lapses within the premises to cart away cables and office equipment. In some of the sections, you hardly find workers too due to economic hardship, which makes it difficult for them to come to work,” one of the workers, said.
Another staff at the secretariat lamented that the once-functional government hub has become a shadow of itself with only a few individuals coming to work while offices are left to deteriorate due to the absence of workers.
“I learnt that those casual workers cleaning the places stopped coming to work because the government was no longer paying them. Even the security people at the gate are not coming to work either. The gates are left unmanned,” the staff added.
When contacted, the Federal Controller (Housing) in the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Engr. Salami Rasaq, said that the untidiness was because the workers responsible for the job abandoned their duty post following delayed payment.
Rasaq said the matter was being looked into and that the facility manager had already mobilised the workers to return to their duties as the federal government has put machinery in place to clear the unpaid monies.
He, however, confirmed the vandalisation of armoured cables in some of the wings of the secretariat and the theft of fans in the facility’s chapel, adding that he received letters from his colleagues heading certain parastatals in the building’s wing B reporting stolen items.
The federal controller added that the stealing was because the gatemen quit security posts over nonpayment of entitlements, disclosing however that their matter was being treated alongside workers engaged to keep the surrounding of the secretariat clean.
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