Bauchi Gov inaugurates committee for payment of gratuities

Determined to improve the standard of living of senior citizens who have served the state in the past, Bauchi State Governor,  Mohammed Abubakar has inaugurated two committees to ensure the immediate commencement of payment of gratuity to state and local government retirees with a clear directive to the committees to prioritize those who retired on lower salary grades.

The Governor, however, lamented the absence of private employers of labour in Bauchi state, which necessitates 98 per cent of the state’s resources to go to civil servants who constitute a negligible percentage of the nearly 7.8 million people, leaving only 2 per cent of the remaining resources to provide essential service for the state.

According to a press statement issued by the Press Secretary to the Governor, Abubakar Al-Sadique, the Abubakar-led administration which came into office in 2015 while workers were on strike with their four months unpaid salaries, has prioritized the payment of monthly pension, like workers’ salary, as and when due.

The release further showed that the Governor lamented that payment of gratuities was delayed because it has been politicized in the state, saying,  “N15.5 billion unpaid bill was received by our transition committee in 2015, and when we decided to start making payment a whopping sum of 26.3 billion naira was presented to me. This happened in just over a year and I find it unacceptable.”

The Governor who observed that fate of civil servants elsewhere is still worrisome, owing to irregular payment of salary, said he made it clear that only an acceptable figure would be paid, pointing out that civil servants kept fighting him by frustrating his efforts to pay the accumulated gratuities.

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He explained that the continuation of payment the accumulated gratuities is to commence soon for both the state and local governments’ retirees with the Bauchi State House of Assembly and other agencies to monitor the conduct of the exercise.

Mohammed Abubakar then revealed that the state lacks internally generated revenue as Pay as You Earn (PAYE) is the major source in the state, with less than the state’s monthly wage bill of 5.4 billion naira sometimes coming as allocation from the federation accounts.