FG owes 70,000 workers three-month salaries

No fewer than 70,000 civil servants in 30 Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government have yet to receive their three months’ salaries.

The Secretary-General of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, Mr. Alade Lawal, made this known   just as investigations by The PUNCH revealed that states like Osun, Oyo, Benue and Plateau are owing their workers between three and four months’ salaries.

Prominent among the ministries listed by Lawal during an interview with one of our correspondents in Abuja on Monday are Education, Works, Labour and Productivity, Mines and Power.

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He said, “About eight MDAs have been owing workers their salaries from   October. The number rose to 11 in November and in December, hit 30, including departments and agencies.”

Asked what was responsible for the increase in the number of MDAs indebted to their workers, Lawal said some government officials involved in salary payments were engaged in a game of deceit.

He said, “They are telling us that some of the MDAs are involved in expenditure items different from salaries. They said they were spending on items not related to salaries. But that is not supposed to be the fault of the workers.

“There should be synergy in government whereby they have to work in tandem with the Budget Office and Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. They know what they are doing, they are muddling up the whole exercise and suffering workers unnecessarily.”

He said the government had no tangible reason for not paying the workers, having promised to do so before December 24.

“As of   December 22, they promised us that before Wednesday, December 24, these payments would be made. But as I am talking to you now, affected workers have not been paid.

“The Ministry of Works alone has about 26,000 workers. If you add them together, they can’t be less than 70,000 workers that are affected.

“We have been liaising with our people. But you know, this is a festive period and it has affected some of the trade union actions we intended taking. 

The promise that they made last week which they also told the press that they would pay before Christmas, we thought they were serious about it. But latest developments indicate that they are   deceiving us.”

The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had in a statement by her Special Adviser on Communication, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, on December 22 promised that the   salary arrears of civil servants in MDAs would be paid before Christmas.