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page 21 news

BVN: Civil servants salaries trapped over name changes

By Abbas Jimoh

Thousands of Federal Civil Servants have been battling to sort out issues related to names and date of birth in banks across the country.

In Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory many workers throng to secure the release of their restricted accounts over their non-compliance with the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) or Know Your Customer (KYC) documentation.

Daily Trust leant that the problem started since November early last week when the salaries was paid to workers. Some of the workers that operates various accounts using diffierent names or date of birth found it difficult to operate their salaries accounts.

In many cases the banks demand change of name publications in newspapers and court affidavit for them to release the account.

An official of a bank who doesn’t want to be named in press said the BVN has trapped many illegal accounts that were used before to siphon public fund by some government workers.

He said most accounts were abandoned and some fraudulent cases where traced when such people try to bypass the system of use some other tricks for double registration.

Some of the workers who spoke with our correspondent at the Federal Secretariat Complex and at the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF) expressed disappointments that their salaries were trapped in banks despite registering their BVN before the October 31 Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) deadline.

One of the workers who initially told Daily Trust that he was not paid later admitted that he received alert on Friday but that he was unable to make withdrawals till he was told to come to any branch of the bank where he has his salary account.

“I was told to come and do documentation, but this is not fair as I did this BVN since September. It is not good that we the poor people would be made to go through this punishment even after complying with the registration. I stayed for over three hours in queue before it reached me. This means that I may still go without making withdrawals till tomorrow,” the worker lamented.

It was however observed that some of the workers who have their BVN especially in their domiciles were given forms to fill and were seen withdrawing from the counters after bank officials verified their BVN.

Commenting on the development an official at the Federal Secretariat said many of the workers know this would happen to them as they had been warned and repeatedly reminded, but that many were lackadaisical.

According to the official, many of the workers utilized the online opportunity to verify their BVN or had gone to their banks after hearing that many customers account were restricted last week.