By Saidu Idris
365Daily – Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai blamed ‘unsustainable’ dwindling financial resources and higher wage bills as for the recent disengagement of 4,000 local government workers by the state government.
The Kaduna State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has expressed displeasure over the development, asking the government to reverse the decision and seek alternative means of running its affairs without inflicting additional pains on the public.
However, the state government insisted it was ”gross injustice” that the 100,000 employees of the state government was consuming more than 90% of government resources, with ”little left to positively impact the lives of the more than nine million” that are not political appointees or civil servants.
The state government, in a statement signed by the Governor’s spokesman, Muyiwa Adekeye, insisted that the government was not elected just to pay salaries of public servants alone, but to also develop the state by building schools, hospitals, upgrading infrastructure and making the state more secure and attractive to the private sector for jobs and investments.
El-Rufai further said the state was struggling to pay salaries and overheads, adding that in the last six months, personnel costs have accounted for between 84.97% and 96.63% of FAAC transfers received by the Kaduna State Government
He explained that in November 2020, the government of the state had ”only N162.9m left after paying salaries” out of the N4.83bn from FAAC. El-Rufai further said the state paid N4.66bn as wages and in March 2021, only had N321m left after settling personnel costs.
The statement continued, ‘’That month, the state got N4.819bn from FAAC and paid out N4.498bn, representing 93% of the money received.
”This does not include standing orders for overheads, funding security operations, running costs of schools and hospitals, and other overhead costs that the state has to bear for the machinery of government to run, for which the state government taps into IGR earnings.”
Still in defence of its action, the Governor stressed the fall out of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that the public service requires much fewer persons than it currently employs.
”The state government has no choice but to shed some weight and reduce the size of the public service. It is a painful but necessary step to take, for the sake of the majority of the people of this state,” he added.
While justifying the job cut, the statement however described it ‘’as a painful but necessary step to take, for the sake of the majority of the people of this state.’’
The Governor said it was now going to focus on improving the welfare of the remaining workers, noting that ‘’In September 2019, Kaduna State Government became the first government in the country to pay the new minimum wage and consequential adjustments. The state government followed this up by increasing the minimum pension of persons on the defined benefits scheme to N30,000 monthly.
‘’This step to advance the welfare of workers significantly increased the wage burden of the state government and immediately sapped up the funds of many local governments.”