- FG sends Ghost workers suspects’ list to EFCC
An American doctor treating the horrific injuries suffered by Syrian civilians has warned that the closure of a vital highway has put 300,000 people at risk of death and starvation.
Dr. Samer Attar, a Chicago-based orthopedic surgeon who volunteered to help local medics in the embattled city of Aleppo, said last weekend’s severing of the Castello Road has already caused shortages of food and medicine.
“People are running out of fresh fruit and meat. Hospitals and their staff are exhausted,” he told NBC News from southeastern Turkey, where he returned after a two-week stint in a makeshift underground hospital.
The entire city “is going to be bombed and starved to death … unless the international community acts,” he said.
The bomb-cratered and wreck-strewn two-lane highway was the last humanitarian supply line into eastern Aleppo. It was cut off last Sunday.
The northern city — Syria’s largest, and the country’s commercial hub until the start of the war — is a major battleground in the conflict. Its capture would be a strategic prize for President Bashar al-Assad.
Fighting there has escalated after U.N.-brokered peace talks and a cease-fire unraveled earlier this year.
“The situation now is much worse,” Attar said. “The Castello Road was permanently cut due to heavy Syrian government aerial bombardment and ground sniper fire. Before, it had been risky, but now it is impassable … a death sentence.”
He said government forces “shot and bombed anything that moved on the road,” describing Aleppo as “besieged.”
Attar, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, was working in an underground hospital run by local doctors but supported by the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS).
“On a daily basis, sometimes twice daily, I witnessed civilians horrifically and brutally injured from rockets, barrel bombs, and cluster bombs,” Attar said. “Homes, schools, and markets were hit. You would hear about dozens killed, scores more injured. It’s devastating and overwhelming to witness.”
He added: “In spite of these conditions, Syrian doctors and nurses have been living this way for years and refuse to abandon their posts out of a sense of duty and obligation to help the local population. It is a highly remarkable group of people, to say the least.”
Earlier this week, Assad likened himself to a doctor in an exclusive interview with NBC News. The Syrian president refuted suggestions he was a brutal dictator despite the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in his fight to cling to power.
“If a doctor cuts off a limb to save a life, you don’t say he’s a brutal doctor. He’s doing his job,” Assad said.
Attar has made multiple visits to Syria, and recently gave a heartbreaking account of what he described as “the hell of Syria’s field hospitals” to the New England Journal of Medicine.
He told NBC News that the international community needed to act to prevent a worsening crisis in Aleppo.
“There are innocent people dying on all sides of the front lines in Syria but allowing the Syrian government to systematically bombard and starve hundreds of thousands of people is not the answer,” Attar said.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Finance on Sunday said the list of those suspected to be involved in the manipulation of government payroll and allegedly injected ‘ghost’ workers had been sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for investigation and prosecution. The development was confirmed by the Media Adviser to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Festus Akanbi, while responding to enquiries from one of our correspondents.
Akanbi stated, “The ministry has sent the list of those involved in the ‘ghost’ workers scam to the EFCC and they (EFCC’s operatives) are the ones investigating the matter.” The Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit had, last week, said it found discrepancies on the payroll of the Federal Government’s Ministries, Agencies and Departments to the tune of N6.4bn.
The Head of the Continuous Audit Team, Mr. Mohammed Dikwa, had told journalists in Kano on the sidelines of the two-day National Revenue Retreat, organised by the Ministry of Finance, that the amount was the true state of their findings as of June 30, 2016. President Muhammadu Buhari had set up the Continuous Audit Team to look into the finances of Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies to arrest the menace of ‘ghost’ workers, over payment of allowances, fraud and embezzlement in then MDAs.
Dikwa had said, “The Continuous Audit Team plans to conduct regular checks on the control and risk assessment of MDAs. We look at the records that are being kept to ensure transparency and accountability of the financial transactions carried over time.
“In terms of ‘ghost’ workers, we have found about 43,000 ghost workers so far and as of May 30, we had N4.2bn that is saved on a monthly basis. “But as of June 30, we were able to make more recoveries of N2.2bn, which has led to an additional savings of N6.4bn monthly.”
NBC with additional report from Citizen
