Cross River owes health, LG workers more than four months salary

By Edem Edem,

Calabar

Less than 24 hours to Christmas, thousands of public health and local government workers in Cross River State are still being owed over four months salaries. Investigations conducted by our correspondent in Calabar revealed that some workers were owed salaries ranging from August-December 2016.

Our findings also revealed that the state government has paid ts workers up to December while those of public health and local government are staggering. No reason was given for non payment of these groups of government workers. Sadly, Governor  Ben Ayade recently dissolved the elected chairmen and local government counsellors as their tenure expired.

He directed the out gone chairmen to hand over to director of administration. However, the salaries were owed before the tenure of the out gone chairmen expired. Mrs Affiong Emmanuel Bassey, a worker in one of the local government councils told our correspondent that she and some of her colleagues are owed four months salaries.

“I wondered how we are going to survive, our children are asking us for clothes and shoes, we have no money to buy anything for them, we don’t know what we are going to eat in this xmas, it is as bad as that. Please, plead with Governor Ayade to look into our problem now that he had paid state government workers up till December”

When this Newspaper visited the office of the commissioner for local government affairs, the commissioner Hon. Onoh Ulafor was not in the office and his aids declined to comment on the issue. At the time of filling this report, local government staff and public health workers were yet to be paid and how they are going to do for this xmas remained a mirage.