Consultants engaged by C/River govt pay N63m into private accounts, Labour alleges

Consultants engaged by the Cross River state government illegally deducted N500 from each government worker amounting to N9million monthly since October 2016 and N63million till date, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has alleged.

The money was said to have been paid into private account despite demand by NLC to stop the deduction and pay the deducted amount back to the workers.

Disclosing this on Monday while speaking at the workers’ day celebration, the state council chairman of the NLC, Comrade John Ushie, said that the consultants commenced the audit exercise without showing workers its terms of reference neither has the consultants published its findings till date, hence, the continued complaint by government of bloated wage bills is “a voyage of futility.”

The NLC expressed displeasure with the state governor, Prof. Ben Ayade whom they had awarded the ‘Best Friendly Governor’ last year that, he has not paid many workers and pensioners correctly due to data mix-up and failure to carry out monthly update of salaries as well as wrong computation of check-off dues and other deductions as at when due on the system.

“Disjointed payment of salaries with some staff, especially teachers in the local government service, are owed up to six months salaries since June 2016,” labour expressed regret and faulted the governor’s decision to transfer local government staff salaries to Ministry of Finance while those of primary school teachers to be sent to SUBEB.

They noted that “this indeed is an anomaly…Local government as a third-tier of government is a creation of the Law (Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution and amended in 2007 as section 55 of the local government Law).”

“The operation of local governments including payment of salaries of staff of the Unified local government is covered by the law. Raking measures outside these statutes have serious legal implications which your Excellency will not want to be bogged down with. Therefore, let the symptoms of the disease be treated rather than amputating parts of the body manifesting the disease,” Ushie warned.

Ushie said that the solution to the problem was not in the implementation MDA as neither the Ministry of Finance nor SUBEB have super human beings, rather, it is the incompetent, inefficient and irascible consultants who have complicated the best salary payment format in place since 15 years ago, “It is clear that the consultants have nothing to offer and will lead us to nowhere, hence urgent need to terminate their contract.”

Labour recalled that in the federation, payrolls are legal responsibility of the Accountant General’s office but in cross river state payroll is controlled by consultants with the platform domiciled in Enugu state, “Before now, our payroll system has been the best in the entire nation such that Balyesa, Rivers, Taraba and Plateau as well as states in Eastern zones came here to to be trained and understudy us” regrettably, one of those states we trained is handling our payroll.

After listening to the NLC speech, the deputy governor Prof Ivara Esu who represented the governor Ayade promised to implement all was in the speech but the level of implementation remained unknown but acknowledged that the state has a better motivated work force. “We can say without any fear of contraction that we have a better motivated work force.”

“From the gloomy days of delayed salaries, stagnation in promotions, truancy on the part of workers and late coming, among other disgusting habits and tendencies, has emerged a new civil service of tremendous promise” he stated.