Fraud running into hundreds of millions of naira has been reportedly uncovered in the Lagos State Waste Management Authority, LAWMA, ThePunch is repor
Fraud running into hundreds of millions of naira has been reportedly uncovered in the Lagos State Waste Management Authority, LAWMA, ThePunch is reporting.
It was gathered that the beneficiaries were some contractors, who engaged street sweepers for the cleaning of Lagos roads. It was learnt that due to the connection of some of the culprits, who are mostly politicians, there was fear nothing would be done about the discovery.
A former Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of LAWMA, Dr Muyiwa Gbadegesin, was said to have been removed as storms gathered on allegations of fraud in the system.
“The running cost of LAWMA rose from about N540m to N1bn and the governor, who wanted to save money, asked the former MD to step aside for an audit. The new MD, Mr Ibrahim Odumboni, was asked to oversee the process,” the source said.
LAWMA has 652 operators with 15,498 workers, including sweepers and supervisors working for them. The operators are allocated different areas of Lagos, which are designated as routes. There are 600 routes in Lagos.
Each contractor employs the number of sweepers to cover their assigned routes. A sweeper gets N25,000 per month as salary, while a supervisor is paid N40,000 per month. However, the contractors reportedly padded wage bills and passed the cost to government as the salaries of their workers.
“If as a contractor, I am supposed to have 40 sweepers on a route, I will simply employ five, while telling government I have 40 people working for me. I will then collect their money, in addition to the money paid to me by government as a contractor,” a source said.
Trouble however started when auditors got to the Ikorodu area to verify claims made by the contractor in charge of the route. A contractor identified as Iron Lady allegedly had 66 routes assigned to her. The woman, it was said, claimed to have 2,310 workers. The auditors discovered that most of the names submitted by the woman to collect money were non-existent, while a number of the routes were unkempt.
Based on the figures she submitted to government, her company was collecting over N80m monthly from LAWMA. On the appointed day, only half of the number she gave showed up for verification. In some cases, a sweeper would be discovered to own several phones documented under different names,” the source said.
As against the N80m the operator was collecting, her fees were supposed to be about N34m.
