Delayed salary, fuel scarcity combine to make Christmas bitter for Bayelsa
Bayelsa residents, particularly civil servants would not have fun celebrating this year’s Christmas as the twin evil of salary delay and strangulating fuel scarcity combine to take shine off the celebration.
Despite a directive by Gov. Seriake Dickson for December salary to be paid before Christmas thousands of civil servants in the state are yet to even draw their November salary.
Though the Governor gave the directive on Wednesday, compliance could not however be effected across board as workers in few mainstream ministries got their December salaries as at Friday the last working day before Christmas.
It would be recalled that November salaries of civil servants were delayed due to a stalemate at the October Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting and subsequently delayed November salary of Bayelsa civil servants to the second week of December.
Daily Times investigations showed that workers in most Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) were yet to be paid for November.
A secondary school teacher, Henry James on Sunday said that he was yet to get November salary let alone December.
“It is unfortunate; I am yet to collect anything for November, in the case of teachers, when the salary gets to the Post Primary Schools Management Board (PPSMB) they will send the funds to the various school accounts from where the teachers’ accounts are credited.
“Although some of my colleagues have received theirs, a lot of us are still left out and we are already heavily indebted and cannot borrow from people who had given us loans that we have not paid.
“The directive that December salaries should be paid when some of us are yet to get November leaves more to be desired, we are certainly not on the same page at all. Often those of us who work in the MDAs have our salaries delayed for two weeks or even more.
“The Governor’s directive on Thursday was not feasible due to the bureaucratic bottlenecks that characterize government, the way it is people I borrowed from to survive till date are already on my neck and they do not believe me because they heard the news,” James said.
Another worry is how to get the money from the banks as the long queues at Automated Teller Machines is always scary. Some of the banks have just one branch in the whole of Bayelsa which puts enormous pressure on other banks, making the scenario very frustrating.
In the midst of this, transport fares have risen sharply to more than hundred percent as a litre of petrol sells at N300 at filling stations while black market goes as high as N400 to N500 per litre.
Chris Eze, Yenagoa
