Gov Bello orders payment of LG workers

Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State has directed the
immediate release of March salary to the staff of local government
councils in the state. He hinged the delay in payment on the
on-going verification of the entire work force on the state government
payroll as well as that of the 25 local government councils of the
state. The Governor gave the directive when he paid an unscheduled
inspection visit to the venue of the on-going verification exercise of
local government staff at the Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi International
Conference Centre, Minna. Majority of the council workers said that
 they were not opposed to the staff audit, but expressed displeasure at
the sufferings being experienced in the conduct of the exercise.
Moved by the plight of the workers who came from far for the exercise,
Governor Sani Bello directed the release of the salaries of the council
workers immediately, in order to ease the hardship on their families. “I
 want to appeal to you all to be patient, I have directed the release of
 everybody’s money (March Salary), and you should go back to your
councils,” the governor directed. The governor maintained that
government is not unmindful of the hardship experienced by the civil
servants, but assured that the verification must be carried out so as to
 fish out ghosts from the system.
“I wish to assure every one of you that the verification exercise was
 not a punitive measure targeted at anybody. The staff audit is a
necessity. You all can bear with me that since the inception of this
administration, we have always paid workers as at when due, but we need
to get our figures right, hence this exercise.” Justifying the staff
 audit further, the governor lamented that the revenue accrued to the
state from the federation account cannot accommodate the wage bill of the state.
“We have a very high wage bill we cannot accommodate. This month
(March) alone, the whole money we got from federal government is
N2.69billion and our wage bill is N2.4 billion. We have to borrow over
N400 million from the bank. So the verification must continue”, he
said. He then pleaded with the council workers to exercise patient
and told them that the verification exercise will be rested for a while
to enable government fine tune some identified lapses in the exercise
and resume it in a more organised manner. 

---